


The Freedom Job

by CatKing_Catkin, Telaryn



Series: Ties that Bind [6]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Leverage, Supernatural, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Control Issues, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Demon Deals, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Headcanon, I Just Have To Out-Run You, It's Hard and Nobody Understands, Minor Use of Clint Barton, Minor Use of Skye|Daisy Johnson, Sex, You Never Know Who's Listening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 04:31:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12927513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: In a world where vampires and things that go bump in the night and deals with demons are real, the Leverage team has in recent years been playing on a larger and darker stage than they ever expected to be.They've adapted, of course, with knowledge of their own pasts unearthed to help them along.  And to the outside observer, they might even look like they're thriving.These days though, they're driven by a secret.  One they can barely talk about amongst themselves - in order to save the lives of Sophie, Eliot and Hardison, Nate allowed himself to be roped into a deal with the King of Hell, with his soul the price.It's a deal they may be forced to live with - for now - but one the Leverage team will never settle for.  And when a man from another world, with the powers of a God, comes to them looking for help, the team will confront Heaven, Hell and Death itself in order to find a way out.





	The Freedom Job

**Author's Note:**

> The end of a journey - the end of an era. The Freedom Job represents the fifth and final epic staring with two ideas my daughter and I had nearly a decade ago: "what if Faith the Vampire Slayer was Nate Ford's illegitimate daughter", and "what if Lindsey McDonald and Eliot Spencer were twins - and Lindsey's connections to the supernatural world are the reason Eliot has survived so many impossible scenarios?"
> 
> Hundreds of thousands of words have been written in the interim - catalogued as best I could here: https://theroadhouse.dreamwidth.org/15889.html, for those who might be interested. We've drawn in multiple fandoms in that time, twisting the stories around each other in what I hope has been an interesting ride.
> 
> Joining me on the final leg of this admittedly long, strange trip is the ridiculously talented @jeminamoonnight. They swear that the video and gif set are their first real effort at each - and if that's the case, we're going to see amazing things from them in the future.

For some of them it was a journey that had started in a hospital in Boston, Eliot near dead of injuries so numerous they _would_ have killed an ordinary man. From there they’d learned that Eliot _wasn’t_ an ordinary man, that through his connections to the law firm of Wolfram and Hart he’d been given enhancements to his strength, speed and constitution that explained so much of what the team had already seen him do.

That hadn’t been the end of it though – not by a long shot. The ensuing years would reveal that Alec Hardison had known an entire other life as the demon-cursed Jake Talley; possessing enough physical strength to make the Hulk at least sit up and take notice of him. Parker had been a victim of the Rossum Corporation before meeting up with the team, one of the “programmable people” that conspiracy theorists whispered about, but whose existence no one could ever manage to prove.

The breaking point for all of them turned out to be that Sophie Devereaux had once upon a time traded her soul to the King of Hell, in exchange for ten years to become the greatest grifter the world had ever known. She’d been on her deathbed at the time the deal was made, victim of poison slipped to her by a mark looking for a most final and absolute brand of revenge.

Nate had saved her without a moment’s hesitation, just like she’d saved him a thousand times over. This time though, the price of her salvation had been quid pro quo – his soul for hers. The King of Hell, wearing the face of his long-time friend / enemy James Sterling, had revealed that Nate’s soul had an uncommon value to the forces of heaven and hell, but Leverage’s mastermind preferred not to think too deeply about what that might mean. Not only did it shake his perception of himself and his place in the world, it had also prompted a betrayal so deep and unfathomable several members of their strange little family were still dealing with the fallout.

If forced to pin down the moment when they’d taken that collective “giant step outside their minds” however, Nate would swear that the madness they were dealing with now had been set in motion years earlier – at the very moment he and his high school sweetheart conceived the daughter he wouldn’t even know existed until nearly three decades after the fact. Faith was a vampire slayer – the supernatural was what she fought and what she was – and it was easy to conclude that Team Leverage’s immersion into that shadowy world of magic and monsters had truly begun with her. 

Lately though, faced with the fact of his own mortality and the impending and irreversible loss of his soul, Nate had been forced to acknowledge the hand of something – or _someone_ – greater than all of them in the mix of their lives. He’d always had a prickly relationship with the concept of “God”, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore the idea that some kind of higher being had been responsible for bringing everything together in such a perfect – if not horrible at times - fit. The level of coincidence required otherwise was just too large for any rational person to support.

He also wasn’t sure how he felt about evidence of that shadow world starting to make itself felt across the globe. First was news of an attempted invasion of New York City by actual aliens – proof that while they may have been among the earliest to realize it, this was something that was going to change the fabric of reality as they’d always understood it.

New of “the incident”, as it had become commonly known was met largely with an almost fatalistic sense of resignation by the team at large – although Hardison had dutifully added action figure representations of the Avengers to his work space. There had been a general sense of surprise when Parker stole his Black Widow figure, especially when Eliot was eventually able to report that she was keeping it in her pocket for ‘good luck’. 

Even Faith had found a connection to the ‘new world order’ – rediscovering a childhood friend in the archer Hawkeye, as well as a potential blood relative in a young hacker working with the government agency charged with facing down the planet’s new threats head on. 

Closer to home, the global shift meant that clients coming to them for help with strange or outright supernatural problems no longer felt the need to prevaricate; something Nate also hadn’t been able to entirely embrace as an improvement to their situation.

Ghosts existed. Vampires existed. Aliens and gods that were probably just aliens existed. Through it all, the Leverage team dealt with each problem as it came to them, as they had before and would again. And if some of them threatened to bury his tolerance needle, Nate took comfort in the knowledge that there were other heroes around now – visible, powered crusaders ready to deal with the things his people never could.

They weren’t gods, after all, and no matter how dedicated they were to the cause, his people couldn’t be everywhere, and would never be able to save everyone. It was a hard truth, and until his deal came due it was still his job to make the hard calls. So for as long as possible, the growing insanity in the world would not keep them from doing what they did best – helping those with nowhere else to turn. They would continue to take on clients, beat down the bad guys, and if Crowley happened to come for his soul in the middle of a job, Nate took comfort in the fact that his team was tough enough to pull themselves out of the fire and keep on going without him.

This life felt like the only one he’d ever known, and if it turned out there wasn’t a way to save it, Nate had finally decided that he wasn’t going to spend however long he had left cowering in fear, or running around in circles looking desperately for a ‘fix’ to his circumstances that didn’t exist. 

He also found a new appreciation for those moments when he sat across a table from some new face and began puzzling through how they could turn that person’s circumstances around to something more – if not entirely positive – at least manageable. Faith was sitting next to him this time – still an unusual occurrence for Nate, as his daughter’s skill set was more in line with Eliot’s work than Sophie’s - but the young man who had come to them for help this time had first reached out to her. What he’d told her had been more than enough to convince Faith that this was her type of case.

Their prospective client had introduced himself as Lucio Maxwell – Parker had already lifted his wallet long enough to verify as much. He looked to be in his early-to-mid-twenties, and most everything about his dress and bearing said “bookish college student.” He’d barely been able to look either of them directly in the eye, apparently only driven out of what must have been habitual shyness by his own desperation.

His mother had been taken, he said. By monsters, he said. That answered Nate’s question about how he’d ended up making contact with Faith.

“I know it was stupid of me,” Maxwell said, his voice carrying an accent that Nate could only narrow down far enough to identify as “British”. “Somebody as wealthy and elegant as that interested in somebody like…like me.”

It took him a moment to pick up on the romantic implications, but once he did Nate rolled smoothly with the information. Faith had gotten there already, without even the tiniest hitch. “Pro tip for the future kid,” she sighed, “since it seems you’re smart enough to live that long. Vampires ‘love’ in the sense that a dog loves kibble.”

“I know that now,” Lucio protested, but it was half-hearted – his expression miserable. “And if…if you can help me get my mother back…” His gaze fell once more to his hands, which were folded so tightly on the tabletop that they were shaking, knuckles standing out dead white. “…I’ll never go outside after dark again. Or I’ll learn how to kill them. One or the other.”

“Make it the one,” Faith said, her tone abruptly one of somebody who understood the feelings driving the boy. “Dusting vamps is something best left to professionals.”

“Professionals have to start somewhere, don’t they?” Despite his brave words, the young man put Nate in mind of nothing so much as a child protesting that they weren’t _really_ scared of the dark. There was a fierce light of determination in his eyes, that was true, but Nate didn’t see any way this kid wouldn’t get killed, going up against a vampire in a fight. Most of the team had more than enough scars to prove Faith’s point by now.

“Enough” was all he said aloud, holding up a hand and cutting off the argument before it could start. “You came to us with your problem, and it’s something we’re qualified to handle. Now, you mentioned that you met this vampire when he was masquerading as some sort of a recruiting agent. Not the sort of places vampires are traditionally encountered.” He glanced at Faith. “I was under the impression that their, ah, ‘limitations’ hampered their mobility during the daytime?”

“They do,” Faith admitted. “But a vamp who’s really on the scent can get around it. Stay in the building through the night, avoid windows, leave when the sun goes down. That sort of thing. Angel’s had to pull that trick plenty of times."

Nate couldn’t help the way his mouth drew into a disapproving line at the sound of Angel’s name, although truth be told after the nearly fatal turn his relationship with Rupert Giles had recently taken, he thought he might cheerfully sit down for a drink with the vampire if that was his alternative.

“I guess,” Lucio spoke up with a half-shrug, fidgeting in his seat. “I keep going back over all the times we talked, trying to think of if I ever saw him in sunlight, but I can’t remember. It’s just not the sort of thing you look for, I suppose. Or…” Here his green eyes widened in the beginnings of alarm. “Could he have done something to my head? Vampires can do that, can’t they?”

“Not usually,” Faith hastened to assure him. “Not unless they’ve picked up some extra magic. It can happen, but your average bloodsucker doesn’t bother. Anyway. How did you go from meeting up at a job fair to him snatching your Mom?”

“Well, I mentioned during the interview that I had a gift for languages. He became quite, um, insistent at that, about my taking a job. A few more meetings were offered to try and press home the point, and, against my better judgment, I agreed. After all—”

“Never turn down free food,” Faith finished with a wry smile.

Lucio’s cheeks colored faintly, but he smiled in relief at having been spoken for and nodded. “Precisely. It doesn’t seem worth it now, but at the time, I couldn’t see the harm.” He bit his lip, expression falling once more, and said with a sigh in his voice. “And then when I wouldn’t agree to his proposal...”

“He took your mother,” Faith finished, nodding.

“I suppose I should have expected something like that,” Lucio continued, truly miserable now. “I already knew the company he was representing had something of a nefarious reputation. That’s why I was reluctant to take the job in the first place.”

A tiny, tinny, but no less insistent alarm bell started to clang in the back of Nate’s head. It wasn’t necessarily the most logical conclusion to leap to, but nefarious reputations, vampires, aggressive business tactics, lawyers, clients, all put one name in his head.

“Who did you say he was representing?” he asked, before Faith could offer any more sympathy or support.

“Didn’t I mention?” Lucio blinked, looking genuinely surprised, before shaking his head and reaching once more for his coffee. “Sorry. My mind’s all over the place, what with…everything. He said he was representing Wolfram and Hart. Why? Have you heard of them?”

* * *

Lucio Maxwell wasn’t the only one whose attention was all over the place, as it turned out. Confirmation that they were being solicited for a job involving Wolfram and Hart hadn’t raised so much as a peep over the comms – a fact that threatened to push Nate’s already worryingly high stress levels just south of stroke territory, as he and Faith retreated to the team’s offices at the rear of the pub.

He expected to see a flurry of activity. He expected to see Hardison running his usual background checks on their prospective client – referencing all available data on Lucio Maxwell that his computers had been able to gather from the moment Parker had stolen the boy’s wallet. He expected to see Parker, Eliot and Sophie crowded around the hacker, eager to know what sort of nightmare had landed on their doorstep this time.

What he most certainly did _not_ expect to see was Parker sitting off by herself, head bowed, staring at her hands which were folded in her lap.

He also did not expect to see Sophie sitting on the couch at the opposite end of the office, staring at a fixed point in space that as far as Nate could tell was empty – and a foot to Parker’s left. Hardison was where he was supposed to be, but he was frowning at his computer screen in a very worrying fashion.

Only Eliot was where and how Nate expected to find him, and the mastermind was relieved to see that his hitter had also picked up on the high levels of ‘wrongness’ in the air. “You buy his story?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter in his chair; his relief at seeing Nate and Faith obvious.

Faith’s expression was suddenly and clearly uncertain, which perversely steadied Nate. “I want to read the fine print first,” she said, sliding her favorite chair close enough to Eliot’s perch for the two of them to be able to comfortably hold hands. “What’d you get, Hardison?”

There was a moment of awkward silence as several of the team exchanged glances. Nate didn’t want to be that guy – he didn’t want it to bother him that Faith had stepped on his moment…

…except he was totally that guy, and everybody in the room except Faith knew it. “Hardison, run it,” he said at last, silently daring any of the others to say anything.

Still uncharacteristically subdued, the hacker nevertheless hit a few buttons on his laptop and the bank of monitors on the wall behind him immediately flared to life. The data that appeared in front of Nate did nothing to alleviate the mastermind’s growing concerns; it was sparse, compared to what he was used to seeing from Hardison. The few scattered pictures he’d assembled of Lucio Maxwell looked as though they’d been pulled from the standard list of social media sites.

Getting to his feet with a soft groan, Hardison picked up his remote and moved into his usual position – the better to address them all. “Lucio Maxwell,” he began. “Claims to be a student at Oxford. Studying linguistics. Apparently his Mom went missing a few days back, and he—”

“Hang on,” Nate said sharply, holding up a hand. “Go back to ‘claims’.” Faith was also more alert, having picked up immediately on what Hardison was pointedly _not_ saying. She went to her knees on the seat of the chair, balancing herself with a hand on Eliot’s thigh.

Hardison rolled his eyes, and for once the gesture didn’t inspire Nate to thoughts of violence, since it was the most normal expression he’d seen from the hacker in over five minutes. “I was _getting_ to that,” the hacker drawled. “Patience, grasshopper and all that, especially since I’m not sure I understand or believe all of it myself.” Here he paused to survey the team, and none of them failed to notice the way his gaze lingered on Parker or how she seemed to shrink even further into her seat as a result. “But since Nate went ahead and ruined the surprise, I’ll just say it. Lucio Maxwell,” Here he waved the remote, banishing the sparse, scattered selection of pictures from the monitor. “Is faker than the proverbial three-dollar bill.”

It wasn’t the first time Nate had been across the table from a fraud. Hell, it wasn’t even the second or the fifth or the tenth. Most of the time they were harmless – easily taken care of. Sometimes, however, they weren’t, and since Wolfram and Hart’s name had already been most definitely dropped, Hardison finally had the rapt and complete attention of everyone in the room.

“Are you sure?” Nate asked finally, going over the exchange with Lucio Maxwell – or whoever he was – in his mind. He liked to think of himself as someone who wasn’t easy to lie to, and even on instant replay, everything about the young man he’d spoken with rang painfully and perfectly true.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Hardison hastened on, returning to his keyboard to tap out a few more commands. “It’s not a _terrible_ job. But if he knew he was going up against _me_ and this is his ‘A’ game, I’ve got a few books that might help him out. Located in the ‘For Dummies’ section of the local library.”

“So who is he?” Eliot asked, his tone already clearly conveying his growing annoyance with the hacker. “Have you figured that out yet, or is this just you showing off?”

To be fair to the hitter, Hardison _was_ starting to babble; the way he always did when engrossed in his tech to the exclusion of all else, desperately nervous or both. Right now Nate was betting on both as the hacker’s fingers flew across the keyboard. To the mastermind’s surprise, the window that popped up next, blown up to occupy several monitors at once, was YouTube. “I ran the picture Parker snapped through facial recognition, and while I got a few matches that were close, there was really only one that hit it right on the money.”

The search terms he typed were “alien invasion speech stuttgart”. Several similarly titled videos popped up, and Hardison clicked on the top one before looking up to watch it with the rest of them. It had obviously been taken on a cell phone camera – that much Nate could tell from the way it was shaking, even if the actual picture was reasonably clear. The scene it depicted, however, was as chaotic and impossible as any disaster movie he had ever seen.

 _Explosions_. Blinding flashes and lancing bolts of light. Fleeing people, crowded together and all but trampling one another in their haste to get away. Screams, distant police sirens.

“That’s the opera house,” Parker murmured in surprise, leaning forward in her seat. Nate didn’t ask how she knew. Parker had a flawless memory for former crime scenes, and a rich and varied career even when he hadn’t been pursuing her. In fact, Nate’s only source of surprise was that Sophie hadn’t identified the building first – for pretty much the same reasons – but a quick glance found her attention still only half on the video.

In front of whoever was holding the cell phone camera, something _shimmered_ into existence. One minute the space was empty; the next it was filled with someone dressed in an archaic brand of what could only be described as armor, complete with a golden helmet affixed with two large, curved horns. Another flash of light, and another, identical figure appeared a short distance away. They both turned to menace the crowd, hefting identical scepters, and as they did, the camera caught a glimpse of their faces.

Hardison paused the video at exactly the right moment. The picture was blurred just a bit in the heat of the moment, but it was still enough for Nate to see for himself the very same ordinary Linguistics major who had just been speaking to them out front: Lucio Maxwell.

“Oh, wait,” said Hardison, apparently seeing Nate’s expression. He smiled without a trace of humor in the gesture. “It gets oh so much better.”

He played the video once more, and suddenly all eyes were on the screen as a voice ran out like a knell of doom, raised effortlessly above the screams.

“I said…KNEEL!”

A flash of light blotted out the view for several long seconds, and when it returned they saw the entire crowd of panicked, fleeing people from the opera house slowly sinking to their knees. All gazing towards a single figure, which was revealed to be, when the cell camera turned towards it and hastily tried to zoom in, the same figure as the four surrounding the crowd on all sides.

The same figure. The same face. Lucio Maxwell, who most certainly was not a Linguistics major from Oxford.

As they all watched breathlessly, the distant figure spread its arms as though in welcome to them all. One hand held a scepter that glowed blue, and as he raised it Nate finally realized exactly what they were watching. He’d never been able to bring himself to seek out the accounts for himself before now; they’d all been too busy dealing with the aftermath to consider much of the events leading up to “the incident”.

“Is this not simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy, in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end…you will always kneel.”

It was precisely the same voice that had spoken to Nate and Faith so earnestly of wanting his mother back, only twisted and changed, made predatory and triumphant by having reduced a crowd of what musthave been over a hundred people to kneeling at his feet. The figure on the screen before him was an exultant, alien conqueror.

Hardison paused the video at that point. “It goes on for a bit after that, but I think we all get the idea. This guy is, to say the least, pretty bad news. Pretty bad news with a raygun, which usually makes even worse news.”

“I must have heard that same speech a dozen times,” said Eliot, still watching the frozen image thoughtfully. “I guess people really are the same everywhere.”

“Even when they’re not people,” Faith added grimly.

“So what is he?” asked Parker, resting her chin in one hand. “An alien?”

“Yep.” Hardison started tapping a few more keys. “‘Loki Laufeyson’. Officially labeled as an Asgardian, just like our friendly guy with the hammer. This and about twenty other videos were the only real public records that existed of him for the longest time. But, once I found this, that gave me an idea of where else to look.”

“SHIELD?” asked Eliot and Nate at the same time.

“SHIELD,” Hardison confirmed without looking up. “Gotta say, I wish I knew who dumped all their files out onto the Internet, because I’d like to propose them for sainthood. I mean, I could get past their firewalls and all that, but I’m a busy man and those are forty-five minutes I could be using for other things and Sophie am I boring you?”

Nate looked up to see that Sophie had actually gotten up from her seat and walked to a point in the center of the room. On its own, this would not be anything unusual. Their briefings, for all their importance, had never been the most formal affairs, particularly when they were presided over by Hardison. However, coupled with her distracted attitude since the moment he’d walked through the door, Nate wasn’t the only one who’d found himself concerned.

It was a feeling that only grew stronger as he heard the tone of Sophie’s voice when she answered Hardison – distant, somehow far away and at the same time cold as steel. “No, Hardison. It was a very interesting presentation. In fact…I think some of us were a bit too interested.”

She swung her arm suddenly, palm out, lashing at empty air…

…at a space that had apparently never been empty air. As the slap connected, it was like flipping a switch, like pulling up the blinds and letting the sunlight pour in. Suddenly, it was as though Nate was being allowed to see Lucio – Loki standing there – in the middle of the room as though he belonged there. He barely looked bothered that Sophie had just slapped him literally into existence, and Nate knew from past experience that the phrase “the taste out of your mouth” could be applied to one of Sophie’s slaps with perfect accuracy.

Instead, he merely lifted his head to smile at the dark-haired grifter like a spider regarding a particularly plump fly. “Was it something I said?” he asked, in a tone of perfect innocence.

“Sophie, get back,” Eliot ordered. He and Faith were already on their feet and moving into position.

“You, get out,” Faith growled at their intruder. “Whatever you’re up to, we’re not interested.”

Loki rolled his eyes and brushed right past Sophie to regard Nate’s two heaviest-hitters. His arms hung loose and his hands were apparently empty at his sides. “Come, now. Is that any way to speak to a client?”

“You’re not our client,” Nate said, finally finding his voice and still barely recognizing it for a second. “You engaged our services under false pretenses. I don’t know what the law is like up in Asgard, but down here it means we don’t owe you a thing.” Motivated by a great many things – starting with concern for his team and ending with sheer disquiet – Nate got to his feet as well. Hardison and Parker joined him, so that all six of them faced Loki on their feet and ready to react however they had to.

Loki looked from one of them to the other, and at last he sighed and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. He still brushed right past them, placed a hand on Faith’s chair, and hopped neatly over the back of it to settle into the seat, meeting Faith’s glare without so much as a flinch.

“For what it’s worth,” he finally said, after a second that dragged for an eternity. “I was going to tell you the truth of the matter eventually. I only wanted to…well, get the measure of you all, I suppose. Call it natural curiosity after the stories I’ve heard, especially since it’s really only Faith’s help that is useful to me.”

That idea was disturbing all on its own, but there was something else Nate noticed when Loki said it. His gaze remained locked on Faith as he made this admission, except for the barest instant when it flickered to Parker instead. Even then, Nate might have thought he was imagining the tell, except for the way Sophie’s gaze darted to Parker as well, eyes widening ever so slightly in what was nevertheless unmistakable alarm.

“Why’s that?” Faith asked, drawing Nate’s attention forcibly back to the situation at hand.  
Loki seemed to hesitate. That was really the only word for it. “I would prefer to discuss the matter with you privately, in point of fact. The truth is…somewhat personal. You can relate the entirety of it to your friends afterwards, along with whatever doubts you might still carry, after we are finished.”

“And this discussion,” Faith mused. “It would happen far away from the rest of the team, right?”

“Faith,” said Nate, Eliot, and Parker at virtually the same time – all their voices carrying equal variations on the same warning tone.

“As far away as you’d like,” Loki replied with an easy smile – almost, Nate, realized, as if he was enjoying the chaos that seemed to be blooming in his wake. “Truth be told, this entire affair needn’t involve them at all.” He paused. “Except my plan for payment, of course. That would affect all of you in one way or another.”

“Say what now?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention?” He seemed to brighten noticeably at the prospect of actually getting to mention. “Yes, I heard you were having some difficulties with a demon. As you might expect, demons pose far less difficulty for the likes of me than they would for any of you. Given your extensive research on the matter—” Here he rolled his eyes in Hardison’s general direction. “I’m sure I don’t need to convince you that I could talk the King of Hell into surrendering his claim on Nathan Ford’s soul.”

And there it was – the one thing none of them would be able to resist, Faith probably least of all. Even though Nate had tried insisting that they leave it alone, in twos and threes every member of the team had at one point or another tried to find a way to break the deal that didn’t involve losing half their number in the blink of an eye – and in a little over a year the closest they had managed to come was a scheme that had nearly gotten Nate ritually murdered before it was done. He still couldn’t remember seeing Faith and her doppelganger standing side by side and not break into a cold sweat.

After all that, to have any potential solution suddenly walk into his life, sit down in his daughter’s favorite chair, and offer its services in exchange for something from his only living child, filled Leverage’s mastermind with more dread than hope. He wanted to order Loki out of the room – reject anything the Asgardian offered – just so his family wouldn’t climb back up on that hopeless merry go round one more time.

He was not surprised, however, to see that Faith had other ideas. “I don’t suppose you have a cell phone or something, so I can call you when I find a place?”

“I’ll find you,” Loki answered with a half-shrug. The matter apparently resolved to his satisfaction, he got to his feet, turned towards the door, then paused as something else apparently occurred to him. Absolutely everyone in the room tensed as this led to him rummaging in a coat pocket, until what he actually pulled out was revealed to be something about six inches high with red hair.

“Hey!” Parker snapped, starting towards him with all anxieties apparently forgotten. “That’s Hardison’s!” 

“And yet I borrowed it from your pocket.” Loki turned the Black Widow action figure over and over in his hands, wearing an expression of faint distaste, before looking towards Hardison. The hacker was also drawing near, offense at such a desecration of one of his favorite collections apparently outweighing his fear. “A fan, are you?”

He tossed the figurine contemptuously over his shoulder, where it was quickly caught by Eliot. “It’s a terrible likeness.” Unconcerned, Loki focused his attention entirely on Parker and added, “Someone like you can find better heroes.”

“I don’t need heroes.” Parker’s voice was as cool as Nate had ever heard it. “I just think she’s cool.”

“In that, we both agree. I speak from a great deal of personal experience. She certainly was a striking woman.” And then, in front of absolutely everyone and without a trace of shame, he actually bowed to the thief. “I seem to stumble across such women quite often.”

Nate almost heard Hardison’s self control snap. “All right, it’s time for you to ow—”

The cry of genuine pain was because just as Hardison reached out to grab Loki’s shoulder, Loki whipped around in a blur, grabbing the hacker’s wrist and instead twisting the his arm behind his back forcibly enough that Hardison almost fell to his knees. “Hm,” he said, without a trace of effort and with a significant amount of satisfaction. “And here I’d heard so much about your vaulted supermortal strength, Jake.”

That was all it took to get Eliot and Faith moving, both of them grabbing an arm and heaving. It proved to be enough to get Loki away from the hacker, perhaps only because doing so actually did cause Hardison to collapse to his knees. Parker called out his name and raced over to him, either to help him up or shield him or both. A mercifully brief scuffle between Eliot, Faith, and the intruding alien resulted in Loki backing towards the door, hands up and empty in an utterly meaningless gesture of peace.

“And here I was going to tell you how very enlightening I found your earlier analysis,” he said, in a tone of patently insincere mock-offense, looking down at Hardison as Parker helped him to his feet. “I’ll be sure to have words with the young man I hired to create my temporary identity about his shoddy work. Very pointed words, in fact.”

Loki looked to Faith, then, and smiled as though he wasn’t being menaced out of the apartment. As far as he was concerned, Nate was forced to acknowledge, he probably wasn’t. “Faith. I look forward to speaking with you, soon.”

“Don’t call me,” Nate’s daughter snarled, her fingers flexing into fists at her side. “I’ll call you.”

“Of course.” He inclined his head regally towards all of them, and then turned to open the door. “I look forward to an extremely productive partnership with you all.”

He stepped out into the hallway and as they watched, he vanished.

“I hope that shows you what a terrible idea it would be to meet with him alone,” Sophie said, arms folded tightly across her chest as she glared at Faith.

“Actually,” Faith responded. “I think it just proved my point.”  
********************************************  
Faith badly needed to hit something. Loki would have been the perfect outlet for her near-toxic levels of adrenaline and frustration, but there had been too much potential for collateral damage in the way as he made his retreat. _He’s not going to leave it alone either,_ she thought, continuing to flex her fingers. She knew his type, and she even knew the scale. If nothing else, they'd been sufficiently amusing that he wouldn't leave it alone. She needed to end this and end it fast – and to do that she needed intel. All around her were points of leverage Loki could use to easily force her cooperation.

“Are you really going to make me put you under twenty-four-hour surveillance?”

Startled, Faith focused on Eliot – who was also glaring at her. “I’m not planning anything!” she protested, adding the “yet” silently in her head. She was really trying hard not to lie to any of them – but especially not to Eliot.

“You’re not meeting him alone,” Nate added from his place across the room. “No arguments.”

Faith blinked, startled as she realized Nate hadn’t actually forbidden her to _meet_ with Loki. “We need more intel,” she said carefully, still half-expecting to be shut down. “I’m trying to think of sources he won’t have anticipated yet.”

“Do my ears deceive me?” Hardison called from his place at the desk. “Is somebody volunteering to help me with research?”

“Skye or Barton?” Eliot asked, drawing her attention again.

Faith shook her head. “I’m not getting the runt involved unless we don’t have a choice.” In the back of her mind she knew the odds of keeping her overly inquisitive cousin out of whatever this was shaping up to be was going to be almost impossible, but she was determined to do the responsible thing for once and keep Skye out of danger as long as possible. “Clint was at Ground Zero when the Chitauri invaded – he should be able to tell us something.” Pulling out her cell phone, she started for the back door only to be brought up short by Eliot following on her heels.

“Not alone,” Nate repeated, before she could protest. Father and daughter stared at each other for a long moment, locked in a silent battle of wills. It went against everything Faith knew to stand back and obey orders when a way to save Nate might be within her grasp, but after the way the last time she’d defied him turned out, the scales were unfortunately still tipped very much in his favor.

“Not alone,” she agreed, turning on her heel and letting Eliot tail her outside without a fight.

“You know if there’s a real chance here…” she muttered as soon as they were out of earshot.

Grabbing her by the arm, Eliot dragged her to a stop. “Okay, let’s get something straight.” Faith was so stunned by his reaction it took her a moment to pull free. Eliot let her go without argument, but he was clearly determined to have his say. “I am not doing this ‘secrets and lies’ thing again. It never ends right, and I’m tired of it. We’ll check out Loki’s claims, see what he’s offering, and don’t get me wrong Faith – I hope it’s the answer to all our prayers – but you are not throwing yourself on any grenades. Not this time.”

Faith mentally counted to ten, and then to ten again for good measure. “How about I agree not to get my hopes up and you guys stop assuming I’m going to jump straight to doing something stupid?”

She didn’t know how she felt about the fact that Eliot grinned at her just then. “Evidence is stacked against you, babe. It’s not assumption when the odds pass 98% certainty.”

Scowling, she moved further away from the building and hit Clint’s number. Ever since they’d reconnected over the matter of him finding a cousin she’d never known existed, Faith had been counted among the very small handful of people who had the archer’s private phone number.

Three rings in she heard his voice. “Hey Barton!” she greeted him. “Can you talk?” Visions of her childhood friend battling aliens while carrying on a long-distance phone conversation with her filled her mind suddenly, and she almost started giggling herself.

_”Sure – what’s up?”_

Exhaling softly, Faith began to pace. “We’ve, uh, had a visitor – and he’s raising some red flags. He introduced himself as Lucio Maxwell, but Hardison did some digging and placed him at the site of some recent Avengers activity.”

_”That could be really bad. You said he introduced himself as Lucio Maxwell – was Hardison able to get a real name?”_

“Loki,” Faith said, glancing back at Eliot. “Loki Laufeyson.”

Clint was quiet long enough that Faith began to wonder if they’d dropped the call. When he did finally speak again, the fear in his voice vibrated straight through to her bones. _”Faith, what did he say he wanted?”_

“He _said_ his mother had been taken by a vampire, and he wanted my help getting her back.” Eliot moved in closer, and Faith was just about to put the call on speaker for him when the air around them shivered with energy. Loki, looking more like the would-be ruler they’d seen on the YouTube video and less like the linguistics major he’d pretended to be, shimmered into view.

“I see everything they say about you Slayers is true.” Before Faith or Eliot could react, he grabbed Faith by the wrist and yanked her into an impossibly tight embrace. “Hold on,” he cautioned, and the next moment everything Faith was ceased to exist.

The moment after that she and Loki were someplace she didn’t recognize, someplace that definitely was _not_ Portland. A scream of rage and fear was filling up her lungs, but she channeled it all into breaking Loki’s hold on her – shoving him back several feet.

The Asgardian appeared thoroughly put out by her reaction, but Faith saw no indication that she had hurt him at all. “That’s not the way to win me over to your cause,” she snapped, hands clenching into fists. She _really_ needed to hit something.

Loki actually laughed at her. “I have already won you to my cause, Faith, so please do not waste my time pretending otherwise.” Sobering, he brushed at his clothes. “If you insist I will apologize for rushing you out of there, but you were on the verge of making things entirely too complicated.”

 _“Faith, you’re talking to a man who spent several weeks of his life overshadowed by an alien consciousness.”_ “You were the ‘alien consciousness’ Barton told me about,” Faith said, exhaling sharply as the realization washed over her. “Man, I’ll just _bet_ you don’t want him knowing you’re sniffing around.”

“Point of fact, I was _wielding_ the alien consciousness,” Loki observed, “but ultimately that is neither here nor there. If you wish me to intervene with Crowley on your father’s behalf, we will need to keep the Avengers out of our business.”

As she didn’t have any sort of exploitable connection to the Avengers beyond her friendship with Clint Barton, Faith didn’t have a problem with Loki’s condition. Her innate stubbornness kept her from admitting as much before asking, “And what precisely is our business?”

Loki drew himself up, but Faith could see a flash of real, almost human emotion in his expression. “Not everything I told you was a lie. My mother has been taken by a monster.”

“Okay,” Faith acknowledged. “Monsters I can do, but something tells me anything I can kill you can kill harder. What is this really about?”

“I do not require you to kill this monster, Faith,” Loki said calmly. “I require you to petition on my behalf for my mother’s safe return.”

“Petition?” Faith could almost feel the needle screech across her thoughts. “You mean, like, negotiate?” In spite of herself, she started to laugh. “Look, whoever you think you are, I want what you can do for Nate but you have big time fucked up here. I am so not your girl.”  
***********************  
It took Eliot a moment to realize that he’d caught Faith’s phone as she vanished. Heart racing, he brought it up to his ear. “Barton…Barton! It’s Eliot Spencer. Whatever you know, tell me fast because our guy just phased in here and made off with Faith.”

Eyes scanning the surrounding landscape, even though he knew in his heart there was no point, Eliot listened as Faith’s friend detailed for him a being guilty of impossible crimes, someone who had single handedly brought about the Battle of New York, where thousands of people had lost their lives. “Any idea where he would have taken her?” Eliot asked, backing towards the rear entrance of the pub. _Nate is gonna kill me._

 _”We’re sending somebody to help you figure things out,”_ Barton said. _”Eliot, you need to make sure when you find her that what you get back is actually Faith.”_

Visions of programmable people dancing in his memory, Eliot tried to dredge up everything his brother had ever mentioned about glamour and how to combat it. “Will do,” he agreed. “How long until we can expect your help?”

Eliot could hear Barton conferring with somebody just out of earshot, then he said, _”Any minute. He’ll look for some place out of view to touch down, but you’ll know when he’s there.”_

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Eliot glanced overhead and saw dark clouds rolling in with an unnatural speed. “I think I see what you mean,” he said as another roll of thunder vibrated straight through to his bones. “Anything else I need to know?”

 _”If I think of something, I’ll call,”_ Barton said. _”Eliot, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. She probably wouldn’t have ended up on Loki’s radar if it weren’t for me contacting her about Skye.”_

“Don’t waste time beating yourself up,” Eliot said. “We get her back whole and you and I are even.” He hung up the phone as an object streaked into view – heading for the ground. Eliot pressed himself as far back as he could as the object struck the pavement; resolving itself into a very large man holding a very large hammer. _Thor,_ his brain helpfully supplied, recognizing the man more from the miniature likeness that stood on Hardison’s desk than any special knowledge. _Send an Asgardian to catch an Asgardian. Okay._ It even made a certain amount of sense, which Eliot counted as a blessing.

Blue eyes zeroed in on him immediately as the sometime Avenger straightened up. “Where is my brother?” he asked, returning the hammer to a place on his belt. “Where is Loki of Asgard?”

“We don’t know,” Eliot said, stepping forward with his hands spread in what he hoped was a universal ‘not looking to fuck with you’ gesture. “That’s why we need your help.”

Thor eyed him cautiously. “Hawkeye said that Loki kidnapped someone? A woman?”

He was outwardly calm, but Eliot could taste ozone in the air. This man wasn't human, but he was human- _shaped_ and so he was giving off some of the same cues. The hand gripping the hammer was white-knuckled. His shoulders were a tense, straight line. Apparently, staying in control also involved not dumping a tropical storm all over Portland, and Eliot knew that keeping him talking would be best.

So he nodded. “Her name is Faith. He said she could help him with something, but the story he gave us looks like it was a lie.”

“That does not surprise me,” Thor said. Eliot was startled to hear something that sounded like regret in the bigger man’s tone, beneath the agitation. _Regret, and...resignation?_ Oh, Eliot knew that tone. He knew that tone all too well. _And that would be the universal note of ‘my brother is a psychopath, but he’s still my brother,_ he thought, trying not to smile at his sudden surge of sympathy for Thor. “Can you repeat for me the tale he spun?” Thor asked. “I might be able to pick out the relevant notes of truth. One thing I have learned from Loki is that the most insidious lies possess at least a few.”

As much as he hated the idea of bringing even a benevolent supernatural being into the bosom of his family, Eliot knew his odds were going to be significantly better somewhere indoors. “Follow me,” he said. “Faith has family that also needs to be told what’s happened.”

The fact that Thor needed to duck in order to enter the pub should not have made Eliot as nervous as it did, but his awareness of Clint Barton as ‘Faith’s friend’ and an Avenger was starting to mix with his knowledge of Hawkeye as a SHIELD agent. Faith’s friend wouldn’t do something that wasn’t in Faith’s best interest. An Avenger wouldn’t send help that might turn on them at the wrong moment.

 _A SHIELD agent, on the other hand..._ He'd taken on warehouses full of well-trained snipers that shook him less than just watching Thor move.

“Can we get you something to eat or drink?” he asked, at a loss for something to say as they entered the office. Nate’s eyes were on Eliot immediately, before taking in the presence of Thor and the absence of Faith and not liking the results. Anything he could have said, as well as Thor’s answer to Eliot’s question was immediately overshadowed by Hardison’s gasped out, “Thor? You go out to make one phone call and come back with a God?” He shook his head, eyeing the Asgardian up and down. “Damn Eliot – I am impressed.”

“We ran into a little problem outside,” Eliot said – pitching his voice to try and draw everyone’s attention away from Thor. Not that that was any small feat to accomplish, not with Thor still all but radiating the threat of thunder. Hardison was a lost cause, _of course_ , but Eliot noted Parker at the edge of his vision didn’t seem to be happy about the Avenger’s presence at all. She wasn’t at the point of pulling one of her vanishing acts, but it was obvious she wasn’t about to charge forward and ask for Thor’s autograph either.

“You’ve got a hell of a gift for understatement,” Nate said. “Talk.”

Once the mastermind heard the facts of what had happened, he at least seemed to be willing to accept that Faith hadn’t gone with Loki willingly, and there really had been nothing Eliot could have done to stop it.

“Whatever his plan is,” Thor said, settling into a stance with his arms crossed over his massive chest, “I would agree that it appears Loki has decided only this Faith will serve his purposes.”

“Any help you can give us in figuring out what his real purpose is would be greatly appreciated,” Nate said. “He mentioned vampires, but we’re reasonably sure that part was total crap.”

Thor considered the statement for a moment, then nodded. “I would agree. Can you repeat to me the entire tale as Loki told it to you?” he asked. “As I told this warrior here, I might be able to see those points of truth he has sprinkled throughout his lies.”  
*****************************  
Eliot hadn’t been the only one to notice Parker’s behavior around Thor. As Nate began to repeat what they had initially been told of ‘Lucio Maxwell’ and his other-worldly problems, the hacker made his way over to where Parker had finally perched. “What’s up?” he whispered, catching her attention.

She shrugged, but it was obvious by the way her eyes kept darting back to Thor that something about the Asgardian was bothering her on a very deep level. “Is it worse than it was with Loki?” he asked, remembering her confused, almost tranced-out reaction when the trickster God had been standing in their midst.

Parker’s eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out an answer to his question. “Different,” she said finally. “He’s pushing on me and it hurts. Loki was more like drowning.”

 _And this is me, not liking that at all,_ Hardison thought, reaching up to urge her down beside him. Catching Sophie’s eye across the room, he ticked his gaze at the door into the pub. The dark-haired grifter nodded almost imperceptibly, tapping Nate’s wrist to alert him to the fact that something else was going on. “We’re gonna get food for everybody,” Hardison said as Parker finally relented and jumped down to stand beside him. “This looks like it’s going to get involved.”

“I am grateful for your hospitality,” Thor said, nodding at Hardison. “Might I inquire your name?”

Hardison couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Hardison, your Avenger-ship. Alec Hardison. This is Parker.” The thief’s hand tightened reflexively on Hardison’s as Thor’s attention shifted to her. Hardison had a moment to wonder if he imagined the slight furrow in the thunder-god’s brow, then it was gone and the big man was bowing to both of them.

“A pleasure to meet you both. I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Me too,” Hardison hastened to say. “We’ll be back as quick as we can.”

“Why did you talk to him?” Parker whispered as they entered the rear of the brew-pub proper. “Now he knows my name!”

Stopping in his tracks, Hardison turned to face Parker – taking both the thief’s hands in his. “You know whatever kind of weirdness is going on, Eliot and I aren’t going to let anything happen to you, right?”

He definitely wasn’t encouraged by how long it took her to respond, but when she threw herself into his arms his heart swelled with all the complicated tangle of emotions that made up Parker’s place in his world. “I know,” she whispered, burying her face against his shoulder. “I wish I knew why this was bothering me so much."

Hardison snugged his arms more tightly around her. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t care what kind of Gods or demons come at us this time. Nobody’s going to mess with you as long as I have anything to say about it.”  
******************************  
“Where are we anyway?” Faith asked. The well-appointed room Loki had taken her to had plenty of windows, but each of them showed the same gray, cloudy, featureless landscape.

“Pocket dimension,” the Asgardian responded, popping a fat purple grape into his mouth. He’d offered her whatever she wanted from the food and drink that covered a table in the middle of the room, but while Faith hadn’t paid attention to a lot of her Slayer studies, the wisdom of taking food offered by supernatural beings had stuck with her over the years. “It requires less effort than a full jump between planes. A step to the left, if you will.”

 _And a jump to the right,_ Faith’s brain obligingly supplied, making her scowl. “Okay,” she said, trying to refocus on the problem at hand, “what you’re saying makes sense, but it’s nothing I’ve never heard of in all my years as a Slayer. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to start.” She already knew from her dealings with Crowley that Slayers were the sort of magical being that existed outside of heaven and hell – beyond good and evil – but nobody had ever outright said what that meant.

“Surely you have resources,” Loki said. “I read that Slayers are trained by creatures that call themselves Watchers – call one of them!”

Faith would have laughed out loud if the idea of going to Giles with this didn’t hurt so much. “I can’t trust the only watcher I know,” she said, turning to face her captor. “He and I are definitely not on the same page when it comes to saving Nate. I know a witch who could probably help, but the last time she tried something like this I’m pretty sure she pissed off every supernatural deity across five or six religions.” She paused, not wanting to let go of what was probably going to be their last best hope at saving Nate’s soul, but also realizing that whatever Loki thought she was capable of he was clearly wrong. “Look, there are literally thousands of Slayers out there now. Let me talk to them – there’s got to be one out there who can do what you want.”

Loki studied her for a long moment. “I am going to remind you one last time,” he said coldly, “that this is my mother we are discussing. Out of all Death’s daughters, _you_ are counted the favorite. All the lore agrees, as does every being I have interviewed across the Nine Realms on this matter. If Death has a heart that can be reached on something like this, you are the best chance she has.”

A blast of cold swept through the room, stabbing deep into Faith’s body and reminding her that trickster beings, whether they were Gods or not, were nothing to be messed with. _You’re gonna do what he says,_ she was finally able to remind herself. _No point in pretending you wouldn’t walk into Hell itself if that’s what it took to free Nate._

The world around her seemed to pause as a spark of…something…flashed at the edge of Faith’s awareness. Sensing Loki draw breath to speak, Faith raised a hand to silence him. _Hell…walk into hell…Nate…Crowley….Sam and Dean…_ Seizing on the memory of the hunters who had blundered into their lives during that disastrous time, Faith spun to face Loki again. “Take me home. I know who has what I need.”

The Asgardian looked for a moment as though he was going to argue with her, then he stepped forward and grabbed her arm. She had enough time to draw a breath, then everything she was ceased to exist once more.  
**********************************  
_”Our mother was killed recently. Loki did not…take it well.”_

_”Slayers are known outside of Midgard as ‘Death’s daughters’. That loyalty supersedes any oath the girl might choose to swear in service to Heaven or Hell, or any similar realm.”_

There were a lot of other details to take in, but Nate had always been very good at cutting to the heart of the matter. In the meantime, he flinched as Sophie sat down next to him, holding a plate of food. They'd moved back out into the restaurant itself to talk. He'd found that he needed that bit of normalcy, and Thor hadn't objected. “I’m not hungry,” he said automatically as she set the dish in front of him. His stomach then betrayed him a moment later by growling audibly.

“You know we’re going to get her back,” Sophie said as he picked up a fork and reluctantly stabbed into the vegetables. “We’re not exactly helpless anymore.”

“We’re not?” Nate asked bitterly. “Sophie, even if between Eliot and Thor they manage to figure out how to get her back from Loki, you know Faith. The seed’s been planted. She’s going to see this as an acceptable risk.”

Sophie was silent long enough for him to eat a few mouthfuls of food before she asked quietly, “Are you so sure it isn’t?”

Horrified he turned to gape at her, but Sophie was clearly ready to hold her ground this time. “I’m serious Nate,” she said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had this discussion because it’s been a long time since we’ve had such a promising lead, but nobody has said anything so far that tells me Loki’s idea is a bad one.”

“Death, Sophie,” Nate said – still half-wondering if she was being deliberately obtuse. “I’m pretty sure when somebody like Thor talks about Death, he’s not speaking in metaphor.”

He hadn’t realized how much he’d raised his voice until Thor answered him. “I am not speaking in metaphor,” the Asgardian said. “Far from it. Death is held to be the most powerful being in all the Nine Realms – the one we will all ultimately bend our knee to.”

“And you think that this being – Death – will grant Faith a favor without demanding something in return?” Nate asked, setting down his fork and coming to his feet. “That’s not what my experience tells me. Every last one of you supernatural sons of bitches – the more powerful you are, the more you insist on making us dance for you.” Anger he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding onto exploded outwards as he gestured towards the rest of his family. “Every single person sitting here has had their lives run over by forces we couldn’t fight or control. And when compassion was _begged_ for, all we got were more demands – more taken away from us.”

His system was so flooded with adrenaline suddenly, that the world literally sparkled around him. Even though a part of him recognized the very real danger of angering a being like Thor, a part of him was praying that the Asgardian would do something – anything – to make the cycle they seemed to be locked in end once and for all.

Maybe he hadn’t made as much peace with his circumstances as he liked to pretend…but that didn’t mean he was wrong either.

“Your arguments are not with me, sir,” Thor said finally. “I agree that you and yours have been wrongly used in the past, and it does appear as though my brother intends to continue this trend. All I can give you is my word that I will do everything in my power to keep Loki from hurting you further.”

“Can you petition the King of Hell instead of Loki?” Sophie asked.

Nate knew what the answer was going to be even before Thor said, “The current ruler of Hell is a former Crossroads demon – a supernatural deal maker. Loki is not only your best chance to convince him to back out of this deal, he may be your only chance. More than that..."

Here Thor's gaze fell to his hands where they rested folded on the table. His hammer, he'd hung up on a coatrack by the front door, with the air of a man who'd forgotten to take off his shoes. _Trying to show he's not a threat?_ Nate wondered grimly. _Little late for that..._

Thor finally drew in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh, before he continued on. "More than that, if there is any one explanation I would believe wholeheartedly for this madness, it is this one. Loki was always close with our mother, perhaps more than anyone else living or dead. The last time we fought on the same side was to avenge her, and it is the last time my trust in him was not betrayed. Even now, I cannot believe that he would use her memory in service to one of his schemes. But I can believe grief could have driven him to these measures."

"So if, hypothetically, Faith could make this case for him..." Sophie ventured, tentative but hopeful.

"...then I believe he would truly petition the King of Hell on your behalf, yes," Thor finished simply.

"It's just a matter of if we can hypothetically _bring a goddess back from the dead_ ,” said Nate, a bit louder than he otherwise intended in an effort to bring all involved back down to reality. "And we _can't_." He knew that if he let himself believe as much, that was a one-way ticket to insanity. If he let himself believe that there was any way to bring Sam back, he couldn't even lie to himself that there was anything he wouldn't do to chase it.

Nate suddenly understood Loki a good deal better than he had before. He suddenly knew that mad light in the god's eyes from his own mirror. It was not a comfortable thought at all.

Thor, for his part, didn't look much more at ease. He visibly shifted in his chair, gaze darting left then right, before settling on Nate's face once more. "The precedent is not...unheard of," he said, at last. "In songs, stories. Those hold more truth for us than they might for you. But even if Loki could convince the Lord of the Dead, he should not. Mother is in Valhalla now, she is at peace. And even if she weren't, I know she would not wish him to..."

They never found out what the mother of gods would not have wished her erstwhile son to do. Eliot had been waiting at another table, a respectful distance away in obvious anticipation or orders. Out of the corner of his eye, Nate saw the hitter's gaze snap up, every line of him tensing in an all-too-familiar way by now. A split second later, he understood why. Following Eliot's gaze, Nate was just in time to see the air shimmer and shift, _twisting_ in a way that made his eyes hurt. He glimpsed a deep darkness, and then suddenly Loki and Faith were there. The trickster god's arms were around his daughter in a way that made Nate's blood boil.

One thing gave him a lovely, warm, vicious little glow of satisfaction inside, however. Faith's gaze had immediately moved to the thunder god in the room. Loki hadn't quite noticed. He was too busy talking.

"There now," their newest client was saying. "You will see that I brought you right back where I left you. Now, if you'll move past this."

Thor said nothing. He merely stood, his face utterly impassive and all the more terrifying for it. That bit of movement, however, was enough to properly get Loki's attention. His gaze darted up to see what was going on. Then he saw his brother and went pale.

"Oh," he whispered, in a voice that was suddenly very small.

The phrase "calm before the storm" had never seemed so apt.

Thor took a step forward, and then Loki bolted. Nate wasn't sure if all his talents for teleportation had just deserted him in his panic, or if somehow being around Thor had left him unable. Either way, rather than vanish out of existence, he bolted for the door. Thor bolted after him with a sound that was almost a roar, as lightning flashed bright enough to shine through the window curtains.  
* * *  
_"What's the matter? Scared of a little lightning?"_

_"I'm not overly fond of what follows."_

Loki had had too many nightmares that began exactly like this. The sound of thunder, the flare of lightning, and the sound of achingly familiar bootsteps pounding in pursuit. A voice he'd known almost longer than he'd known his own, baying like a hound on the scent of blood. "Loki!"

His recent brush with his own mortality had made Loki desperately sentimental, and now he was remembering just how dangerous that could be.

Later on, he would curse himself for not just teleporting away to where Thor couldn't follow. It wouldn't have solved the problem at hand, of course, not when Thor had obviously been told of his newfound presence on Earth, his association with this particular group of humans, and his survival in the first place. But it would have delayed this a little longer.

Unfortunately, that hadn't been enough to turn the mad need for _away_ into any sort of proper plan.

So here they were, with Loki stumbling and racing through the door of the restaurant and into a torrential downpour that almost immediately left him soaked to the skin. His feet splashed, kicking up puddles, and too many nightmares left Loki incapable of anything except run, even though he knew it was futile.

It was, too, just as it had been in too many nightmares before. He heard Thor racing closer and closer, sure as the storm, and then Loki felt a grip of iron close around his upper arm and a weight like a mountain, bearing him to the unforgiving ground hard enough to send cracks spider-webbing through the asphalt.

They knew one another, much as they might have wished they didn't. They'd been raised together, they'd played together, they'd fought together and even now, the reason one could never fully triumph over the other lay in part in the fact that they knew how one another fought. Prediction and correction weren't even conscious things anymore, after literal decades spent on opposite sides of a training yard.

This wasn't about training, however. This wasn't about technique or form or control. This was about the base, animal desire to hurt, the fight side of "fight or flight", and Loki wondered if the reason Thor had chased him out here had anything at all to do with making sure the humans weren't caught in the crossfire.

He couldn't wonder too far, however. Not when all his energy was focused on keeping Thor from bashing his skull into a fine paste.

"Did you laugh? When I held you, when I sobbed over your lying corpse?!" his brother was snarling, punching every bit of Loki that he could reach. Mjolnir lay just a few yards away, forgotten.

"If you hadn't taken complete leave of your senses, you would know that was answer enough!" Loki snapped in turn, dedicating all of his efforts to squirming free of Thor's bruising grip. "You held me! And then you were the one who left!"

It was perhaps the cruelest thing he could possibly have said in that moment. Yet like many particularly cruel things, it was also perhaps the most effective. Thor actually froze, fist still drawn back in anticipation of a blow. His hair had fallen into his face, held there by the rain, and in that moment Loki couldn't see his eyes, couldn't even hear him breath over the sound of his own heart and the rumble of thunder even though he saw Thor's shoulders visibly shaking.

For a long moment, they were frozen like that, a moment long overdue that neither of them could somehow bring themselves to end. At long last, something - maybe the right flash of lightning, maybe the sound of movement from back by the bar - brought Thor back to life. The first thing he did was stand up, pick Loki up, and shove him away as though he was something disgusting, or poisonous. Loki stumbled a little as he tried to recover his balance, his feet kicking up little puddles on the street, but finally came to a stop at a safe distance just out of arm's reach.

“For once in your life, Thor, let it go. Forget you saw me - just go back to your human friends, your Avengers, and forget that your brother still lives.” His whole body ached, and his breath was far too labored; Loki wasn’t entirely certain he could teleport now if Thor rushed him, even to save his life.

Thor drew a deep, shuddering breath, and Loki saw him struggle to keep his hands from clenching into fists again. “You’re speaking nonsense,” he said, once he had relaxed a beat. “Whatever else you may have done, the fact that you still live is cause for…”

“My return to prison in Asgard?” Loki said quickly, trying to remind Thor what was really at stake. “Brother, if you care for me at all, spare me that fate at least.”

“Will you leave Barton’s human friends alone?” Loki was barely able to stop himself from rolling his eyes – of course the archer had been the one to raise the alarm.

“I can’t,” he said, shoulders slumping. “I give you my word I have no intention of harming any of them, but the Slayer has connections I find useful.” He hadn’t want to say even that much, but Thor was the proverbial cur with a bone.

“What connections?”

“The kind that will harm no one – you have my word. And in return, I will intercede with the demon Crowley on her father’s behalf.”

Loki had truly underestimated his brother only a handful of times in their lives. This was one of them. “Then you intend to pursue this mad idea of petitioning Death for mother’s return?”

Grief was a weakness – grief shared even more so. But staring across the physical void that separated them, Loki suddenly wanted nothing more than to share his loss with the one person in all the known dimensions who felt it as deeply as he did. “This has a real chance of working, Thor. You cannot deny me the opportunity to try!”

He didn’t know whether the look he saw on his brother’s face was consideration of his point, or merely his own desperate projection. “At what cost, Loki,” Thor asked finally. “You have a way of looking at these humans as disposable. How many of them will be hurt by this madness when all is said and done?”  
******************************************************  
Faith’s plan had been to get to Eliot and call the Winchesters before having to explain Loki’s proposal and her willingness to go along, but Nate clearly had other ideas. “Pop, please,” she begged as he caught her hand, “I’m fine. I just have to make this one call and I swear…” She glanced at Eliot, pleading for back-up, but before he shook his head she realized there would be no support coming from that quarter.

“He didn’t hurt me,” she repeated, including both of them in the statement this time.

“And if we hadn’t just finished an enlightening conversation with the God of Thunder, that might satisfy me,” Nate said. “By the way – you know the only time you call me Pop anymore is when you’re trying to get away with something? Kinda fitting, actually.”

 _Because that’s what you called Jimmy…_ Faith realized, what little fight she had left draining out of her. “Nate…” she began, looking her father in the eyes.

To her surprise, his blue eyes weren’t dark with anger or frustration. “Don’t shut me out,” he said. “Thor read the situation right, didn’t he? You’re going to petition Death for the return of his mother?”

Drawing a deep breath, Faith nodded. “In return, Loki negotiates with Crowley to void the deal.”

Nate was silent for a moment, then he asked, “Is this something in your skill-set? Communicating with Death?”

Faith had to appreciate that he was able to even ask the question, much less without a hint of awareness of how far beyond normal it was. How far we’ve come, she thought. Out loud she said, “Slayers occupy a weird neutral space between good and evil, heaven and hell. Neither side really accepts us – remember how Crowley reacted to me?”

 _“I don’t like Slayers.”_ The King of Hell’s sneering assessment echoed in her mind. She saw the flash of memory stain Nate’s expression as well. “Buffy used to say that ‘Death was our gift’. I wrote it off as being some kind of pompous job description, but if Death is really a being instead of an abstract concept it’s not that far a leap to buy into what Loki’s saying.”

She caught Eliot grinning at her at the edge of her vision. “Look at you with the supernatural theorizing!” he teased, pushing at her shoulder. Scowling, Faith swatted him back.

“Where were you heading in such a hurry,” Nate said, trying to bring them all back on track. “You mentioned a phone call – were you referring to an actual phone?”

Faith snorted before she could stop herself, privately impressed that it had occurred to Nate that clarification might be necessary. “The Winchesters,” she said, choosing to ignore how her father flinched at the name. Sam and Dean Winchester. _Brothers. Hunters._ And the catalyst for so much of what had blown their lives apart. “They play in some pretty deep waters. If Death is a being that can be contacted, they’ll at least know where we can start.”

“Not to mention they already owe us,” Eliot observed.

To Faith’s surprise, her father waived off the hitter’s assessment. “We’re not going there. Either they help us free and clear or we look for alternatives.” The look in his eyes was suddenly as serious as Faith had ever seen. “No more deals.”

“I have alternatives,” she admitted. “Not good ones, but I have them.”  
***************************  
“They’re not arguing,” Hardison said, coming up beside Sophie. “How come they’re not arguing?”

Sophie smiled in spite of herself. Things weren’t as tense between Nate, Eliot and Faith as they’d been even recently, but Hardison wasn’t wrong to be surprised at the idea of the three having a serious conversation without raised voices or slamming doors. “I was just thinking the same thing,” she admitted. Glancing at the hacker she asked, “How’s Parker?”

“Not happy with either of our visitors, but nothing we need to worry about.” Micro-expressions most people wouldn’t have even seen told a different story than the one Hardison spun with his words, but it wasn’t dramatic enough for Sophie to abandon her immediate plan of checking on Nate and seeing for herself what was really going on in their mastermind’s head. As Nate goes, so goes the nation.

When Eliot and Faith finally moved off, Sophie touched Hardison briefly on the wrist, then went to stand by Nate. “I’m all right Sophie,” the mastermind said automatically, ducking his head briefly before looking up at her. “Really.”

Sophie studied him for a long moment – this man that she had loved in one form or another for half her life, before smiling gently at him. “I know. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one wondering why?”

She was mildly startled when he leaned in and kissed her, but it was soft and earnest, and certainly nothing she was going to object to. “I’m tired, Sophie. I’m tired of wondering every morning if today’s going to be the day Crowley takes my soul.”

It was the spark of…something…they’d all been hoping to see in their mastermind for months. His survival instinct – the urge to fight back. Nate stepping back and accepting the trap he’d been maneuvered into had bothered all of them. It prompted Sophie to ask, “What’s different?” They’d been trying to get him to push back against Crowley almost since the moment the deal was made, but the King of Hell had stated that if anyone who had not physically witnessed the making of the deal discussed the specifics with someone who had, the entire thing would become null and void.

Which meant that in the blink of an eye – possibly less, Sophie was forced to acknowledge – she, Eliot and Hardison would cease to exist. She understood why Nate had seen the risk as an acceptable one, but there were days Sophie would have gladly traded places with him just to give him even a little peace.

Nate smiled, and it was as genuine a smile as she’d ever seen from him. “I really don’t know,” he said, shrugging. Leaning across the space that separated them, he kissed her again. It was more intense this time, and Sophie wasn’t even embarrassed at the soft, needy sound it drew out of her. “It just feels like we’ve finally caught a break.”

Liking the sound of that, Sophie hooked a hand behind his neck and dragged him in closer. When Nate kissed her a third time, settling her more securely into his embrace, it was even deeper – more purposeful. “Any reason we need to stick around down here?” she asked breathlessly, when he finally let her up for air.

“None I can think of,” he said, his grin widening.  
****************************  
_Gods…not gods…_ Parker had finally gotten used to the idea of demons and monsters and things that go bump in the night, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about this latest escalation. If it got Nate free of Crowley’s deal it was a good thing – no question – but Loki had talked about approaching Death like that was a thing you could do and come away whole. While she’d long since accepted the idea that Nate’s daughter was a superhero, the rest of it just didn’t fit with her understanding of things.

“So many people in that head of yours."

Parker didn’t know why Loki’s sudden appearance on the roof didn’t surprise her, but as she turned to face him she realized that she’d expected it. “Just me,” she told him coolly.

There was a smile on the handsome face, but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was the kind of smile Eliot had before somebody got hurt, or Nate had when he was drinking too much. “And from where I stand, ‘just me’ is something extraordinary.” Once again he sketched a shallow bow that Parker understood was supposed to convey courtesy or honor, or something like that.

“You’re not a good guy,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

Loki pressed a hand to his chest. “Like recognizes like, Parker. You’re not exactly a good woman, are you?”

The thief couldn’t come up with the words to argue with him, but they were out there somewhere – she knew it. “What do you want?”

She wasn’t wrong – Loki’s smile was definitely not a good smile. “Who says I want something?”

Ah, so it was like Sophie when she was running a con on somebody. “I don’t like games. I’m no good at them. And I’m not going to help you hurt my family.”

He looked almost hurt himself at the suggestion. “I have not lied to any of you about what I want.” When she glared at him, he relented. “I may have shaded the areas around what I want, but the fact that I need Faith to free my mother has not changed. In trade I am willing to give you the one thing your family has not been able to procure for themselves.”

 _Nate’s freedom._ That still didn’t answer Parker’s overriding question though. “What do you want with me?”

“I want your help in making sure that your family isn’t going to try and double cross me in some way,” Loki said, taking a careful step towards her. Parker tried to retreat, but found she couldn’t move.

“They wouldn’t,” she said, suspecting now what was coming and not wanting any part of it. “It makes no sense – like you said, you’re going to give us what we want.” Loki took another step towards her, and Parker felt her throat tighten in fear.

A thin fingered hand reached towards her chest. “It made no sense for Faith to call my brother to the scene. And yet here we are.”

“You’re going to make it worse.” It was a secret she’d been keeping from the rest of the team for months, borne out of a discussion she’d had with a man whose only truth was his love for his brother and his need to protect him above all else. Trying to deal with her own recently recovered memories, Parker had allowed things – things that would have sent the entire team into a murderous rage had they known.

But just because Lindsey McDonald was a bad guy didn’t mean he was entirely wrong. And this time Eliot lacked the ability to sense when magic was working in the area – especially passive spells that only should have flared to life if something was desperately wrong.

 _Or if a supernatural not-god starts poking at them,_ Parker thought, shutting her eyes and tensing as Loki touched her chest, then the center of her forehead. The feel of him sifting through her thoughts, running ghostly hands across the monitoring spells Lindsey had set in her mind, made Parker faintly nauseous, but resisting at that point served no purpose whatsoever.

“Interesting,” she heard him say. Parker felt a brief moment of vertigo, then the Asgardian was stepping away from her, and everything was normal again.

Or as normal as her life ever got these days. “I will make you a separate bargain then,” Loki told her once she felt safe enough to open her eyes. “Be my eyes and ears – let me know if there is a plot afoot to double cross me, and I won’t tell your precious family that you have enough foreign magic coursing through your veins to set off a whole host of problems.”

Parker wanted to defy him, wanted to tell Loki what he could do with his offers and his veiled silken threats – but she was a realist first, last and always. “You keep your part of the bargain with Nate,” she told the Asgardian, privately grateful that she’d managed to keep her voice steady, “or I’ll tell them myself what I let Lindsey do to me, and damn the consequences.”  
*************************************  
_Ground beef…oregano…tomatoes…onions…_ Eliot worked on raw instinct, moving smoothly around the corner of the kitchen they’d all agreed was his whenever he needed time to reset. Olive oil sizzled in his best cast iron skillet, the noise spiking whenever he added another ingredient.

“You are an artist.” Eliot ordinarily preferred working by himself when he was trying to re-center himself, but in the absence of Thor being able to watch over his brother without things degenerating into World War III, the hitter had determined the safest place for the God of Thunder to pass the time was next to him.

 _Besides…_ Thor had been polite about asking, but it was obvious he was still hungry.

“Cooking centers me,” Eliot said finally. “Helps me focus on what’s really important.”

“Your family,” Thor said, nodding as if he understood. Which, Eliot supposed, he did – but only up to a point.

“You and your brother,” he added, glancing up pointedly at the Asgardian. “How much of a threat he is, how much of an ally you are, what kind of collateral damage I should be planning for if the two of you really throw down…”

He was perversely encouraged by how troubled Thor suddenly looked at his assessment. “Hawkeye did not tell me you were a man with a soldier’s instincts.”

Eliot smiled grimly. “Barton doesn’t know all that much about me – and I prefer that it stays that way. I like the guy well enough, but he’s Faith’s friend – not mine.”

“And you don’t trust his association with SHIELD.” Nothing in Thor’s statement invited him to add anything, so Eliot didn’t try. _Besides – he’s not wrong._ “I wish I could set your mind fully at ease,” Thor continued. “You are clearly caught in a situation not of your own making. All I can promise you is that I do not want any harm to come to you or yours.” Off Eliot’s now-pointed glance he added, “And insofar as you have something my brother wants very badly, you can trust him not to harm any of you or play you false.”

Instinct prompted Eliot to add two drops of wasabi oil to his mixture and dropped the heat. “Ten minutes,” he told Thor. Going to the cooler, he took out two of the pub’s better brews. Twisting the top off one, he passed it to their guest. “Enlightened self-interest can make people take risks they wouldn’t ordinarily consider. I hear what you’re saying, and your brother’s offer is the best chance we’ve had yet to get free of this nightmare.” He took the top off his own drink and took a long swallow.

“But…” Thor prompted him, when he didn’t immediately continue.

Eliot smiled, and it wasn’t entirely without humor. “But,” he acknowledged, “I have to consider what happens to my family if this thing does go pear shaped and you and your brother decide that beating each other half to death is the best way to deal with your family drama.”  
******************************  
Hardison liked Faith. Sure, she’d been hard to get close to at first, and he’d accepted her as much because she was Nate’s daughter as anything she herself had to offer – and for the record he wasn’t the only one who’d felt that way – but now he genuinely liked her for herself.

That didn’t mean he wanted to be here in a Wal-Mart parking lot off Interstate 205, waiting for his worst human nightmare to roll up – and the irony of him having to qualify his nightmares was definitely not lost on the hacker. “Tell me again why Eliot isn’t riding shotgun for you on this?”

Faith sighed, her attention never wavering from the parking lot entrance closest to the highway. “He’s playing referee for two aliens capable of flattening this city and everyone in it. If I didn’t have to be the one to reach out to Death, I’d be backing _him_ up.”

There wasn’t anything Hardison could say to that, so he didn’t try. He would have preferred a chance to talk in depth to a real-life Avenger – or hell, even Loki – but if it came down to trying to head off a physical confrontation between the two, Eliot would have been out-classed even before he lost his demonic enhancements to the King of Hell. Hardison didn’t stand a chance.

That didn’t mean he was able to muster any enthusasm for what was about to happen. “You think they’ve forgiven me for trying to kill them?” he asked, only half-joking.

Literally a lifetime ago, Alec Hardison had been a man named Jake Tally, gifted with demon powers that had given him strength to rival the Hulk. The twisting of Fate had crossed his path with two hunters – Sam and Dean Winchester – and he’d ended up stabbing Sam in the back; killing him. For reasons Hardison only barely remembered, he’d also been instrumental in opening a portal to Hell itself, that he now knew had wreaked years of havoc upon the world.

He’d tried to feel guilty, but he’d come out of that night a new man, with a new life and memories, and no connection at all to who he’d been. And until Fate had twisted back in on itself and brought Sam and Dean back into his life, Hardison had lived in happy ignorance of the man who’d once tried to end the world.

“There they are,” Faith said abruptly, pushing to her feet. Hardison felt a shiver of…something…pass through him as he caught sight of the black 1967 Chevy Impala.

He realized with a start that Faith was looking at him. “Relax,” she told him. “If one of them tries to kill you, I’ll handle it.”

She managed to hold her sober expression for a full minute before cracking a smile. Rolling his eyes at her, Hardison nevertheless got to his feet and prepared to meet the men who had helped set all this in motion, and, if luck was with them, would help finally bring it to a close.  
******************************  
“You gonna be okay?” Dean asked his brother, as the Impala rolled to a stop near the black panel van. Neither of them were surprised that Faith had chosen to bring back-up to their meeting – while they had separated from the Leverage team on terms that could generously be described “as well as could be expected”, nobody in their right mind would have considered them good.

It wasn’t until they saw who she’d brought, that Dean realized he’d been expecting to see Eliot Spencer – the mystically trained hitter who helped her guard their strange little family from the supernatural elements that seemed to be targeting them more and more frequently lately.

He hadn’t expected Jake Tally – or Alec Hardison as he was known now – the man responsible for so much of the misery in their lives. “Sam?"

“I’m all right,” his brother said, but the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes said differently. Dean reached across to grip his brother’s arm.

“We’re going to be playing in some deep waters here,” he said, forcing eye contact with Sam. “I need to know if you can keep it together.”

Sam’s expression finally softened. “We owe them, Dean. Whatever it takes.”

Vampire slayers and hunters rarely mixed, but if you traveled the highways as long as Sam and Dean had you heard things. And while they hadn’t made the connection at first, after meeting Faith and fighting alongside her and her family, Sam and Dean realized that the stories they’d heard about the rogue slayer doing time in prison for murder had been about the very same woman stepping forward to greet them now.

Handshakes were exchanged between Faith and the brothers. Dean was amused to note that not-Jake apparently had no more interest in being friendly towards them than they had towards him. Nods were traded, then Faith said, “Death. Know how we can ring him up?”

Dean crossed his arms over his chest. “I know somebody who can ask if he’s free. What’s this all about? You didn’t want to go into details on the phone.”

As Faith explained everything that happened, and how the Leverage team had come to believe Loki’s offer represented their best chance of getting free of the deal Nate had made with Crowley, Dean felt a surge of sympathy for her. He glanced at Sam and saw his brother was thinking along the same lines. Contacting Death was a chancy business under the best of circumstances, but each of them had done things exponentially more reckless for the sake of the other.

“You can’t deal with Death,” he said, once Faith had finished. “He’s not a demon.”

“I’m not looking to deal with him,” she countered. “If Loki can be believed, there’s a mystical connection between Death and the Slayer line. We’re hoping I can use that to call in a favor and influence him into intervening with Crowley.”

“Have you checked on Loki’s theory?” Sam asked.

Dean was surprised to see Faith look genuinely troubled. “The only person I’d trust to ask…” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged helplessly.

“Her Watcher and Nate don’t get along,” Hardison offered. “Even if Faith called him, after what Giles did we couldn’t trust any answer we got.”

Faith looked as though she wanted to argue with the hacker, but couldn’t offer anything useful or reasonable. “It makes sense,” she told them. “On a gut level. And since I’ll be the one taking the risk by making the contact…”  
********************************************  
Sophie combed her fingers gently through the tangle of Nate’s curls. He made a satisfied sound, moving more completely into her embrace. Their lovemaking had been slow, deliberate, and intense, and now as they recovered, tangled in each other’s naked bodies, Sophie knew she would have sold her soul all over again for the opportunity to stay like this for the rest of their lives.

“Why do you have to go?”

Inwardly she cursed herself for asking the question, feeling him tense momentarily in her arms. “Sophie."

She tried to continue soothing him, but the spell was broken. Nate pushed himself up until he could see her clearly. “I’ll have Faith with me. And Eliot. I’m as safe as I would be here, and I’ll have the opportunity to affect how things turn out.”

Reaching up, Sophie caressed his cheek. “My darling, you don’t know that. These are forces beyond any human’s ability to manipulate.”

The mastermind’s thoughts and emotions were such a tangle in the depth of his impossibly blue eyes, Sophie felt her breath catch in her throat. “Sophie, I have to try. Even if it goes nowhere – even if I make things worse – if I don’t start taking a more active role in solving this problem, I might as well be dead already.”

Sometimes Sophie hated knowing Nate Ford as completely as she did. “Look me in the eyes and swear to me that has no part in you wanting to do this.”

She saw the flash of emotion that betrayed him, but it was quickly replaced by his most wickedly charming smile. “I seem to remember you telling me once that men only looked you in the eyes when they lied to you.” Shifting again, he swept the covers back off them – positioning himself so that he was staring pointedly at her bare breasts. “I swear to you this is not a suicide play,” he said. “If Death is a creature capable of hearing me I have things I want to say to him, but I swear to you I will do nothing to actively end my life.”

Lowering his head, he closed his mouth over her right breast – scraping his teeth gently across the puckered flesh of the nipple and drawing a moan from Sophie’s throat. As she arched into him, willingly surrendering to his needs and his touch, another conversation they’d had many years ago drifted up into her conscious thoughts.

 _”…that’s the voice you use on a mark.”_  
*******************************************  
It was by far and away the strangest collection of people ever gathered in the Leverage team offices – even going back to Chicago, when their base of operations had been invaded by Sterling and a squad of ten of his goons. Eliot momentarily saw the bloom of fire behind his eyes as he remembered that chapter of their lives ending in flames and debris raining down on a very confused street.

Sam and Dean Winchester were already at work on the back wall of the space, discussing something that Sam was busy drawing out in white chalk. Leaving Thor to exchange uneasy glances with his brother, Eliot went over to talk to the boys.

“This going to get us where we need to go?” he asked, once they’d exchanged greetings.

Dean snorted. “Eventually. It’s a way for me to reach one of the old boy’s reapers and ask for an audience. Beyond that, it’s pretty much out of our control.” Giving Eliot his full attention now, Dean said, “You look a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw you.”

Eliot grinned ruefully. “I don’t remember – was that before Crowley ripped out my guts and everything else I had that mattered, or after?”

Sam straightened. “You should have told us about Nate’s deal. We could have helped you long before this.”

Early on, the team had discussed doing precisely that, but Nate had been too withdrawn from his ordeal to agree to anything, and the rest of them had decided that Crowley had too close an interest in the brothers and their doings at the time to take the risk. Out loud though, all Eliot said was “You’re here now. That counts for a lot.”

“So how are we playing this?” Dean asked. “Faith said she’s got the connection, but no experience dealing directly with the old boy.”

“I’m going to need you to go with them,” Eliot said, confirming the answer to the question Dean hadn’t asked. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a bit of an alien problem around here right now. I don’t feel right leaving Sophie and the others unprotected.”

Dean nodded. “I’ll help you on this end,” Sam offered. “The old man’s never had much use for me.”

Eliot nodded absently, privately relieved that the brothers were dividing themselves voluntarily. Loyalty had its uses, but the bond between Sam and Dean Winchester rivaled anything the Leverage team could boast within its own ranks. If their goals suddenly shifted and put them at odds with each other…

Before he could follow that depressing thought to its logical conclusion, Sam turned to address the room at large. “Okay – anyone who doesn’t want to stick around for this next part, it’s probably a good time to bounce.” He waited a beat, and when nobody moved looked to his brother.

Dean looked directly at Faith. “How many people are we talking about for this little trip?”

“Loki and me,” she said.

“And me,” Nate said, stepping forward. Even though he’d been expecting the move, it went against every instinct Eliot had not to argue with the mastermind. It was _his_ job to keep their leader safe, and lately it seemed like he’d been racking up more failures than successes.

“And Eliot,” Faith added automatically, when nobody moved to add his name to the list.

He could see the surprise in her dark eyes when he shook his head. “Rear guard duty this time, babe,” he told her. “Somebody’s got to keep the home fires burning.”

She didn’t like it, but Faith was as much of a soldier as any of them. She recognized the tactical wisdom of what he was saying, and her father’s comforting hand on her shoulder effectively quieted any of her more emotional reservations. For Eliot’s part, the look of approval Nate gave him was more than enough to reassure him that he’d made the right choice.  
**************************************  
“I trust you to protect me,” Nate said softly, pulling Faith in for a one-armed hug and kissing her hair. “Somebody’s got to look out for the others.” He could sense her struggle, all the arguments she wanted to make, and was privately grateful that in the end she chose to stay quiet. _We’ve said everything that can be said at this point, haven’t we?_

In front of them, the Winchesters had turned back to face the image Sam had chalked on the back wall of their offices. Portals and inter-dimensional travel were an order of magnitude beyond anything Nate had imagined having to deal with, but now that it really seemed the end was in sight he found that he was actually excited by the possibility instead of inwardly preparing for the next bit of reality to blow up in his face. _Hardison’s probably eating his heart out right now,_ Nate realized, and the thought made him smile in spite of himself.

He hadn’t been paying attention to the particulars of the low chant Sam and Dean had been repeating, but no one else seemed surprised or concerned when the image flared brilliant white, and a distinctly human-shaped woman stepped into view. “Sam, Dean,” she said, greeting each of the brothers with a small nod. “He’s been waiting for your call.”

Before either Sam or Dean could say anything, she stepped past them and came to stand in front of Nate and Faith. “I’m Tessa,” she told them. “First among the Reapers who serve Death. It will be my pleasure to escort you into his presence.”

Nate sensed that she was speaking primarily to Faith, but her expression seemed to include Loki as well as him. “What are the rules?” he asked abruptly, meeting Tessa’s gaze as directly as he could.

She looked confused. “Rules?”

“Don’t touch him,” Dean and Eliot said, almost simultaneously. Nate ducked his head briefly, blowing out a quiet breath as he tried to swallow the smile they had startled out of him.

“Assume I’ve read more than is probably good for me,” he said to Tessa, once he could trust himself to look at her again. “I know there are always rules for meetings like this. What is your best advice for getting in and getting out again unscathed?”

Tessa glanced instinctively at Faith, and Nate tried to ignore the surge of possessive anger that flared up from deep inside his soul. _Mine._ “He’s going to be distracted by Faith,” she said, “so it’s going to be hard to predict his mood. Be polite. That’s a big thing with him – he has no patience for rudeness.”

Nate wasn’t surprised to see the reaper glance at Dean with the hint of a rueful smile. Eliot had agreed to let the hunter go with them, on the grounds that Dean was the most familiar of any of them with the territory and the being who roamed it. “I can be polite,” he told Tessa, not bothering to bring up the fact that the things he planned on saying to Death would be anything but pleasant.

He also decided not to confirm which of his team snorted softly in response to his assertion, although his money would have been squarely on Parker if he had.  
***************************  
Faith tried to ignore the nervous sparking in her gut as her father questioned the reaper. She hadn’t wanted Nate to come with them, but when she’d raised her concerns with Eliot, the hitter had uncharacteristically shut her down. “He needs to do this,” Eliot had told her. “And not just because of the deal – this could give him the kind of closure he’s been looking for his entire life.”

Control was everything to her father – Faith knew that. And yet his rage had given him an impulsive streak she knew all too well. It had been a surprise to learn that side of her personality came from him and not her late mother. “We’ve got to keep him from doing something stupid,” she reminded Eliot, not bothering to add that in an encounter like this one something stupid had almost a 100% chance of being fatal.

Tessa had turned her back on them, starting the process to re-open the portal that had brought her to this plane. Nate had taken Sophie to one side, for as private a good-bye as they could manage under the circumstances.

“That’s going to be your problem,” Eliot reminded her. For all that he was trying to be reassuring, Faith knew Eliot didn’t really like the fact that he wouldn’t be making the trip with them. “It’s going to be hard enough to keep Loki from trying to manipulate things in his favor. You see anything starting to go south, you grab Nate and start looking for the exit.”

Faith didn’t miss how Eliot had phrased his instructions. “What about our ambassador over there?”

Eliot glanced at Dean, but when he looked back at Faith, his expression was supremely unconcerned. “If you can save him, absolutely. If you have to make a choice, you already know what the priority is.”

 _Nate first, Loki second._ The Asgardian was going to continue to be a priority right up until he spoke to Crowley. Faith knew she would do her best to bring Dean home safely as well, but the Winchesters had resources of their own to draw on. _You’d do the same to me, wouldn’t you Junior? _she thought, grinning at Dean as she pointedly stepped between him and Nate.__

____

At the edge of her vision, she saw that Thor had stepped up to say a few parting words to his brother. “I wish you would not do this, Loki.” Blinking in surprise on learning that the brothers weren’t necessarily on the same page when it came to the question of their mother, Faith nevertheless managed to keep her expression reasonably neutral. “Come away with me. Let us make a new start.”

“I don’t know who I am without her, Thor,” Loki said, and it was the most genuine emotion she’d heard yet from the trickster. “I’m…afraid. Afraid of what I’ll do, who I’ll hurt…”

Sam Winchester snorted softly. “Some things are universal,” he said, pitching his voice low enough that only those standing closest to him could hear.

“Time to leave,” Tessa announced, and Loki dutifully stepped up beside the rest of them. As the portal began to glow, Faith searched out Eliot in the room for one last shared glance.

 _Come back to me._ He trusted her to bring Nate back, for all their sakes, but more than that – he trusted her to know that it was equally important to bring herself back, as sane and whole as she ever got.  
**************************  
Tessa’s portal provided a cleaner transition between portals than Loki’s had. Faith was grateful for the lack of motion sickness, although her first glimpse of where the reaper had taken them made her wonder if something else wasn’t going on entirely.

Before she could say anything, she felt Dean watching her. “Old boy’s got a thing for Chicago deep dish,” the older Winchester brother said, shrugging. “Roll with it.”

Faith nodded. She could do that. She’d certainly been dropped into stranger circumstances, after all, and for stranger reasons.

Not fair that it smells so good though, _she thought as they approached the table in the center of the restaurant. An impossibly ancient man, dressed all in black, was indeed enjoying a slice of pizza. Faith couldn’t be sure if he was actually smiling, but she sensed that if this was actually Death – the old man was at least in a good mood._

__

Pale eyes met her dark ones, and Faith smiled. Hearing about the true nature of a Slayer’s relationship to Death had certainly attracted her attention, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of rightness now flooding through her. “Come closer, child,” the old man beckoned, finished his food and wiping his fingers dutifully on a napkin.

Faith sensed Nate’s quick intake of breath, but she gave him a quick, reassuring glance before going to crouch at the old man’s feet. All three of her companions made noises of protest as she rested a hand on Death’s thigh, but the old man raised a hand to silence them. “You won’t hurt me,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “Will you?”

It was a truth she could feel as deep as anything she’d ever known. “Slayers draw strength from my touch,” Death said, and Faith felt a warm glow of satisfaction settle deep inside her chest. “You may touch me as much or as little as you wish.”

Faith suddenly wanted to stay as long as he would have her. She’d never had a real grandfather to speak of, and after everything Nate had become for her she found herself wondering if the feeling would be similar.

Behind her, Loki softly cleared his throat, drawing her focus back to their mission. “I have a favor to ask,” Faith managed finally. “Loki – if you would be willing to bring his mother back to life, he’s agreed to help us with a problem.”

 _He knows,_ she realized as Death raised his head to look at each of the three men who’d accompanied her in turn. Whatever powers Death did or did not possess, she was an open book for him – unable to keep him out of her thoughts even if she’d wanted to – and as she tried to marshal a better argument, a more persuasive argument, Faith understood that none of it was going to work.

“I can’t,” Death told them at last.  
*******************************  
Loki’s first instinct on hearing Death's refusal was to blame Faith – the girl was so besotted in the presence of her lord and master that she hadn’t even made an argument. Then he wanted to blame Death for not giving her the chance. Finally he tried to blame Thor, for not trying harder to keep him from this mad, impossible journey.

“You can,” he said finally, bringing his attention back to the one creature capable of giving him what he needed. “The lore is full of times you have granted second life to a mortal – don’t you sit there like some doddering old fool and tell me that you _can’t_. Are you Death or not?”

Nate Ford, of all people, reached for him – trying to stop him – but Loki twitched free and Faith’s father raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. Loki already knew he was making matter’s worse – he definitely didn’t need a human of Midgard incapable of keeping custody of his own soul explaining the obvious to him. 

Abruptly he realized Death was watching him. “Won’t, then, if you prefer,” he said once he was certain he had Loki’s full attention. “Instead of can’t. The Queen of Asgard’s death happened as it was supposed to. The damage to the natural order if she is restored to life would be too great.”

Loki knew in that moment that he would rather die than face his brother’s well-meaning “I told you sos”. _Thor – once again on the side of right._ “Nothing about her death was right or natural, you fraud! She was a good person – the best of people – and giving her a second chance would enhance the natural order, not harm it!”

“Loki!”

He froze, the only thought in his mind that he had finally gone irretrievably mad – an idea that he’d never once entertained in all the time he’d spent in thrall to the mind stone and Thanos. It was the only explanation for the voice in his ears – the voice Death himself had just finished swearing he would never hear again.

“I am not unmindful of your feelings,” Death said, reaching out a hand to caress Faith’s dark hair. “Or the damage you are capable of. So we will compromise, you and I. One final conversation – one final chance to say all the things you couldn’t.” He inclined his head. “Turn around.”

Pulse pounding in his ears now, Loki did as he was told. Frigga smiled at him, so gently and so warmly, the kind of smile he had not seen or earned in years.

“Do not touch her,” Death said, “and you will have all the time you require.”

“Shall we take some privacy for ourselves?”

Moving like a man hypnotized, Loki followed his mother to the far side of the restaurant – still within Death’s reach, but far enough that they would at least have the illusion of privacy. Frigga stopped, turning to face him again. Instinctively Loki reached for her, remembering only when she took the smallest step back that no matter what gift Death thought he had given them, physical comfort would still be denied. For one wild moment, Loki didn’t care. His mother was here, and he was suddenly, desperately willing to break any rule and pay any price to make sure he never lost her again. 

“Loki,” Frigga said softly, and dammit, but his eyes began to sting almost immediately. “My son. I have missed you."

Loki ducked his head and scrubbed at his eyes fiercely. He would not waste this chance, damn it all. He would not let anything mar the sight of her. He had carried her memory as the most precious treasure there could ever be, and yet here she was again and he saw that his memory might as well have been a mummer’s farce. “Mother,” he whispered, and looked back up at her. “I…”

Again and again, he had planned what he would say to her if he had another chance. He had gone over how he would have acted differently if he’d known that Odin was right, that he really would never see her again. Yet he’d never allowed any of those plans to hinge on the idea that there would be a last conversation. He’d planned to bring her back. He’d staked everything on it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and realized that there was no possible way of holding back the tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The least she deserved was the same apology he had given his brother.

He saw tears in her eyes, too, then. Frigga clenched her hands tightly in the front of her dress, as if having to physically restrain herself from reaching out. “I know,” she said gently. “And I forgive you. But I hope you realize that…you never needed my forgiveness to have my love, Loki. You never lost that.”  
“I should have been there. I should have done something. I…”

“Then you would have died instead. And I would have done anything to prevent that, Loki. You are my son. I could not have born the weight of losing you again.”  
Of course she couldn’t have. Loki grinned weakly at that, remembering that she had stood up to the All-Father himself to keep her bastard child alive. She had always done more for him than he de-served. She had even tricked him for the longest time into thinking he deserved it. He had learned so many things from her, but it seemed that lying was one way in which he would never match her.

This was his last chance. This conversation would have an ending. Death would reclaim her soon. Loki’s thoughts raced wildly for some way to draw this out, for some desperate plan to make this conversation last forever. There were so many things he could ask, so many things he wanted to know.

Somehow, the only question that came out was: “Are…are you well?” He felt immediately, desperate-ly foolish to say so. His silver tongue was quite tied. But this was his last chance, and so Loki pressed onwards. “Is Valhalla as magnificent as they say.”

“A touch dull, at times,” Frigga said, smiling wryly. “But there are so many magnificent stories to hear over the feasting each night. It is not half as dull as you believed it would be, Loki.”

He snorted and fought the impulse to look away. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.” Because this really was his last chance to see her, after all. There was no chance that when he finally, truly died, that Loki would be welcome into that honored hall as well.

Yet Frigga seemed to read his mind as easily as she always had. “Loki,” she said, and her voice was equal parts exasperated and fond.

Loki had a sudden flash of memory, of standing before her smiling sheepishly and yet feeling so proud. He’d been so excited about their magic lessons that he’d read ahead, he’d wanted to do and learn more, and the end result had been Thor spending an afternoon as a frog. Frigga had given him quite a talking-to, of course. Yet he’d also dared to believe that she seemed just the faintest bit proud of him for learning so quickly.

“Loki,” Frigga said again, drawing him back to the present. “You bargained with Death itself to give us this chance. Do you really think I would let even the Norns part us forever?”

“I suppose not,” Loki answered without hesitation. He giggled at the thought, a touch hysterically, be-cause it made so much sense and how had he never realized the truth of the matter before? It felt good to laugh again, truly laugh, while safe in her presence. Yet Loki could feel in the back of his mind that his time was running short. He wracked his brain for anything else he should say, anything else he would regret if he didn’t.

“Thor misses you, too,” was what he finally said. “He loves you. I’m sure you know that already. But he’d be terribly upset if I didn’t say it.”

“It’s kind of you to do so on his behalf, then,” said Frigga. He saw her expression waver again with so much love for her oldest child. Even though he felt a stab of jealousy in the pit of his stomach, howev-er, it was almost as if it was a force of habit rather than a genuine emotion. Loki couldn’t doubt that she loved him, too. He never had, no matter how much he’d tried.

“He seems so much…older, mother.”

“Everything he has been through these past few years would be a heavy burden for any soul to bear alone.”

“Thor? Alone?” Loki chuckled at the absurdity of the idea. “I’m not sure he knows the meaning of the word. Wherever he goes, he seems to attract a coterie of his own soon enough.”

“Yet always without his brother at his side,” Frigga reminded him firmly. “You were raised together. You played together, you fought together, for most of your lives. Everything that has happened since Thor’s coronation day has been like a drop in the ocean of your history together. Of course he misses having you by his side, Loki. He grew up every day believing that the two of you would be together forever, and a few short years won’t truly change that.”

“He truly is an oaf, then,” Loki muttered. But if there was fondness in his tone, too, she was the last person he needed to hide it from.

His time was running short. There was something he still needed to say to her, yet for the life of him, Loki could not remember what. He wracked his brain desperately, felt the breath catch in his throat, because time was running out and there was something he still needed to say to her and he couldn’t live with the regret anymore if he wasted this chance.

Frigga saw the war on his face, and it all must have seemed so silly to her. She saw him struggling, and she saved him as easily as she had once helped him conjure fairy lights in his hands. “I love you, Loki.”

He tried desperately to blink the tears from his eyes. He clenched his hands tightly at his sides to keep himself from throwing his arms around her and never letting go. Then Loki smiled, and felt like the weight of the world had just been lifted from his shoulders.

“I love you, too.”  
***************************  
“I keep feeling like I should be bothered by that,” Nate said. He and Dean had moved a few tables away, in response to Death’s desire to speak with Faith alone, but Nate couldn’t tear his eyes away from how _peaceful_ Faith looked as they talked. He tensed as Faith reached across the table to lay her hand on Death’s forearm, but remembering what Tessa had told them tried to swallow back the rest of his fear.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Dean said, leaning back in his chair. “I deal with this stuff on a regular basis, and it’s bugging the hell out of me.” His casual pose belied the way his green eyes shifted constantly; analyzing and cataloguing points of vulnerability, escape routes – everything Eliot would have been checking for if he’d been here.

And yet, it didn’t steady Nate at all. With the exception of Faith, he was not among friends here. Allies yes – strange bedfellows indeed – but not friends.

“She’s…glowing,” Dean remarked, and now that he’d said the words, Nate could see the effect at work. Counter to everything he’d been led to believe. Death’s touch seemed to be strengthening Faith – filling her with vitality instead of draining it away.

He was suddenly craving whisky more strongly than he had in months. As soon as he had the thought, Nate flinched – pulling his hand back as a glass half full of amber liquid appeared on the table in front of him. Gaping momentarily at the alcohol, Nate looked up at Dean – who grinned ruefully at him. “I feel you man, but I wouldn’t. We’re on shaky enough ground right now as it is.”

Before Nate could come up with a suitably snarky response, both men were brought to their feet by a howl of anguish from the corner of the restaurant Loki and his mother had retreated too. The female ghost had vanished, and Loki was charging at them – grief and rage making the air around him shimmer. “Bring her back!” he howled, and Nate realized at that moment that his focus was Death who, unlike the rest of them, had remained in his seat.

“Bring her back, or send me to Valhalla with her!” Faith was halfway around the table, moving to intercept, when Loki seemed to draw a six-foot long sword from the empty air around him.

 _We fucked up…_ They had assumed Loki’s desire to live would be stronger than his grief and need – that he had been telling the truth when he agreed to the compromise. “Faith, no!” Nate bellowed, praying for his daughter to just this once hold back, not do the heroic thing and put herself between a near-god like alien and Death himself. She would see it as trying to preserve his last best hope to get free of Crowley’s deal, but Nate had never been more certain than he was in this moment that he would hand over his soul personally rather than endure seeing another one of his children die. 

A flash of light washed through the room as Loki raised his sword. Nate threw an arm up to shield his eyes, but ven so it took nearly a minute after things returned to normal for him to discern even the most basic shapes.

It was another minute after that before he realized that Loki was gone. Faith was frozen in place – seemingly unhurt – but her expression stricken, as though she’d just watched her entire world blown to hell. Heedless of any danger to himself, Nate went immediately to her side and gathered her into his arms. She let herself be held long enough for him to feel her heart hammering against her chest, then pulled free – still a warrior and his fiercest protector.

“Everybody okay?” Dean asked, moving in closer, but still giving Faith enough space to back her next play. Nate nodded for both of them – Faith had turned her attention back to Death.

“Help him,” she begged, tears falling freely down her cheeks. “Please. I’ll do…”

Before she could finish the sentence – or Nate and Dean could stop her – Death raised a hand. “Be still, child. You put your trust in one who had his own agenda, but this favor is still not yours to ask and the price is not yours to pay.” Thin, ancient fingers waved in the air, gesturing her to step aside.

Impossibly pale eyes settled on Nate then, and the cold he’d felt hints of since their arrival on this plane was suddenly flooding through his body – seeping into his very bones. “Nathan Ford,” Death said, inclining his head in greeting. “What is it you want?”

Nate wasn’t aware he’d lunged at the old man, until he felt two pairs of hands dragging and pushing him backwards, and Faith inserting herself between him and his goal. “If I don’t get to be stupid, you _definitely_ don’t get that chance.”

He struggled instinctively, but Dean’s grip was as unbreakable as Eliot’s. “You can’t touch him,” Faith reminded him, drawing his attention again. “One moment of contact and it’s game over.”

“You are no longer a man with nothing to lose, Mr. Ford.” Over his daughter’s shoulder, Nate saw Death take another bite of his pizza, chew and swallow. “Tread carefully.”

“You smug son of a bitch,” Nate snarled, pulling against Dean’s hold on him. “All you’ve done my entire life is take from me, how _dare_ you sit there like none of it matters?”

“Dad, please,” Faith pleaded. Nate covered her hand with his own, but otherwise didn’t trust himself to look at her. This was an opportunity he’d never thought to have – he would honor his promise not to do anything legitimately suicidal, but now that Death had given him the opportunity, he wasn’t going to shy away from finally having answers from the one being capable of giving them.

“It doesn’t,” Death said, his expression as maddeningly neutral as ever. At the edge of his vision Nate saw Faith turn – presumably to defend him – but the old man calmly raised his hand. “Step out of the way, child,” he told her. “And Dean, stand down. This reckoning and whatever comes of it is a gift to Faith – no matter what you think you will gain from it Mr. Ford, it is thanks to your living child that I allow you here at all.”

Dean released him automatically, stepping back and giving him room to breathe. Nate felt Faith start to pull away, but hugged her in close to his side. “You are the greatest blessing of my life,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her dark hair. “Never forget that.”

“Why did you rush into the warehouse?” Nate imagined that Death looked pleased at what he had said to Faith, but the question the old man had put out was a heavy one. “Were you intending to save your father, take his place, or join him in his fate?”

Grief shivered through Nate, as the old man’s words called up memories of an explosion – heat and shrapnel rushing over him as he grabbed Faith and dragged her to the ground. Instinct had driven him to shield her with his own body from the flames – he hadn’t hesitated. “I wanted to save him,” he managed finally. “He didn’t deserve to die like that. Dubenich and Lattimer were using him to get to me – he meant nothing to them.”

“Deserve,” Death said, his tone considering. “And if you could have died in his place, would you?”

Tears blurred Nate’s vision. He’d tried not to think about that in the months following Jimmy’s murder. Faith and the presence of the rest of the team had helped talk him down from avenging his father’s death that time, reminding him that he had more to live for than teaching the men who’d executed Jimmy a lesson. Still – if offered the chance to die in his father’s place? Nate tightened his hold on his daughter, but out loud all he could say was “I don’t know.”

“And your son?” Death asked. “Sam? If you could have taken his place would you?”

On the surface it was an easier question. “Yes,” Nate said, not hesitating this time. “He was a child. He didn’t deserve what you did to him. No child deserves that.”

Death leaned back in his chair. “I did nothing to your son, Mr. Ford, but welcome him when it was his time. As I do to all the souls my reapers bring me, without discrimination.” He steepled his fingers in front of him. “You speak of right and wrong, of deserving and not. These are things I can’t consider in my work.”

Nate sensed Dean step forward. “I did a stint as a reaper,” he said. “Don’t ask,” he added, as Nate turned to stare at him. “There’s a reason they call him ‘The Great Equalizer’. You start worrying about who deserves to die and who doesn’t in his business, eventually you find reasons why they all should live. And then everything comes unraveled.”

“Twice now, we’ve spoken about whether or not you would take the place of someone in your life who died before you were ready,” Death said. “Now you stand before me because after all the opportunities you’ve had to accomplish this most reckless of acts, you were finally successful. Why should I take any steps to free you from that thing you have been chasing your entire life? What makes you deserving?”

“I’m not,” Nate said, the truth flooding into him at last with a weight he couldn’t talk his way free of. “And if the price of being freed is the life of anyone else, I won’t do it.”

“And yet, you still come before me looking for the greatest of favors – to be freed of your own short-sighted choice. Why?”

Nate felt Faith tense, but Death shifted his gaze towards her – shaking his head. “Your defense of him is admirable, child, but you cannot save him from this.” Impossibly ancient eyes looked back at Nate. “Why?”

So many arguments in the months since he’d made his deal, so many times the team had defied his wishes and put their own lives and safety on the line for him. Learning the highs and lows of living each day as if it was his last, because for all he knew it would be. Finding Faith and learning how to be a father all over again. _Sophie…_

“I want to live,” he said at last, tears falling freely down his cheeks.

Death nodded. “Faced with the choice, humans usually do.”  
***************************  
Who knew how many worlds away, the Leverage team waited for their people to come home. There were other people too, sharing their space and their concerns for others similarly loved and ‘elsewhere’, but Eliot refused to spare more than a sympathetic thought or two for them. It was a relief being able to share the burden of protecting everything with people who knew what they were doing for a change, but the longer the hours ticked by, the less room Eliot had in his awareness for those other people.

“You okay?” he asked Parker. The thief had retreated to the furthest corner of the room almost as soon as Tessa the reaper had taken Nate, Faith, Dean and Loki away. Eliot hadn’t missed Parker’s disquiet at being around the Asgardians in particular, but he’d had to trust Sophie and Hardison to triage the situation and make sure there was nothing going on that required his immediate attention.

Looking up at him, Parker shrugged. “Is it any better with Loki gone?” he asked.

The thief shrugged again. “Mostly different.” Eliot sat on the couch next to her, and was gratified when Parker moved closer to him, instead of trying to reclaim her own space. “Mostly they make me feel itchy all over.”

Eliot was reasonably sure of the answer after having talked to Hardison and Sophie, but he suddenly felt the need to ask the question anyway. “Did either of them try any magic on you?”

As prepared as he thought he was, Eliot felt a surge of anger when Parker admitted “Loki tried”. She swore that he hadn’t succeeded, that he’d mostly been worried about another double cross “like Faith calling Hawkeye”, and that she’d managed to convince him that as long as he kept up his end of the bargain, she would make sure the Leverage team played fair. “I knew you guys weren’t planning anything anyway,” she told him.

Eliot was racking his brain for a means of getting Parker checked out that didn’t involve calling his brother, when the hair on his arms stood up. “Incoming,” he called, getting to his feet and facing the image of the portal still sketched on the wall.

He’d run every imaginable scenario countless times, but it wasn’t until he saw Nate and Dean – and _only_ Nate and Dean stumble into view that Eliot realized he’d never considered the possibility that Faith wouldn’t return. “What the hell happened?” he demanded, surging forward and grabbing Nate by the arm.

The mastermind was looking as lost and overwhelmed as Eliot had ever seen him. “Faith’s coming,” he managed to get out. “Sam…Dean…you have to help them. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Dean had already grabbed his brother. The two of them were clearing a space in the middle of the room – moving in a way that was horribly familiar to Eliot. “We’re summoning something?” he asked, looking to Nate for answers that might keep him from choking to death on his own adrenaline. “What are we summoning?”

“Crowley,” Nate said. “Go, Eliot, please. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Sam and Dean were already chalking a circle on the wood floor. The others were watching – each of them as unsure as Eliot what the ultimate goal was. The one advantage he had was that whatever was actually going on, he had the ability to help see it through. “Give me a piece,” he snapped, dropping to his knees at a separate point on the circle. Sam obligingly broke his chalk in half and tossed it to Eliot, who began sketching out the lines that comprised his part of the circle.

“Death’s intervening on Nate’s behalf,” Dean said as they worked. “He wouldn’t give us details, but he’s sending Faith with all the authority she’ll need to force Crowley’s hand.”

While he was happy to hear they hadn’t entirely failed, Eliot didn’t want to think too deeply about what “all the authority” might mean. If they’d literally reached Nate’s last chance for salvation, there was very little left that Faith would refuse to try.

Working together, the three of them finished their trap in record time. “You got the chanting down?” Eliot asked. Once upon a time he would have known the exact spell to summon a demon of Crowley’s power and status without even thinking about it.

_Once upon a time he would have known a lot of things._

Dean gestured him away. “Make sure Nate’s okay. Things got…intense. We got this.”

Sophie was talking to Nate when Eliot found him again, but the mastermind didn’t look all that much better. “I didn’t want to leave her,” he said, meeting Eliot’s eyes. “What if he doesn’t send her back? Eliot, what if this doesn’t work?”

“Nate, shh…” Sophie said, trying to soothe him. Eliot took Nate’s hand, but without having seen for himself everything that had happened. _Intense_ just didn’t give him all that much to go on.

“Boss, this is out of your hands now,” he said. Nate’s immediate response was equal parts laugh and sob, which wasn’t encouraging, but it didn’t feel right trying to sugar coat the situation. Not now, especially when he could hear Sam and Dean working their way through the summoning chant.

_Not a lot of time…_

“You’re going to have to leave it to the professionals,” he continued, feeling the air about them start to crackle. “And like it or not, Nate, that includes your daughter.”

_“WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?”_

Nate and Sophie came automatically to their feet – everyone in the room turning to face the figure that had suddenly appeared in the center of the room.

Every member of the Leverage team had crossed swords with James Sterling at one time or another. When Nate had worked on the right side of the law, Sterling had been his partner and his friend. Knowledge that the man they knew had likely always been the human avatar for one of the most powerful crossroads demons ever to walk the earth had shaken them all.

Eliot instinctively moved closer to Nate as Crowley’s gaze swept the room – finally settling on the mastermind. “You better be planning on holding me for a long time,” he said, his eyes beginning to glow a faint red. “Once I’m free I will have your soul in the most painful way I can devise.”

“I don’t think you’re getting free,” Eliot said. “Not this time, at any rate.”

Power shivered threw the room again. Eliot looked at the portal sketched on the wall just in time to see it flare white again. When it dimmed, Faith was striding into the room – murder in her eyes and a long-handled scythe in her right hand. _It can’t be,_ Eliot thought, as he realized where she had to have gotten it.

“Everybody get back!” Dean yelled, as Faith moved in front of Crowley’s trap. She brought the scythe up in a broad, sweeping arc – leveling it at the captured demon. “Whatever happens, do not touch that.”

“Or her,” Eliot added, shepherding Hardison, Parker and Sophie in behind him. Nate was standing just beyond his reach, staring transfixed at his daughter. “Nate!” he snapped, trying to get the mastermind’s attention. “Back up!”

Nate looked confused, overwhelmed, like he wasn’t sure what was happening, and even less what he was supposed to be doing about it. “Move!” Eliot bellowed at him, loud enough that Nate flinched. It was enough to bring him back to himself though, and a moment later he was in arm’s reach and out of – if not complete danger, at least immediate danger.

Beyond him, Faith’s entire being was focused on Crowley, and to Eliot’s eyes she was _glowing_ with power. “I have a message for you, King of Hell,” she growled, adjusting her aim slightly, so that the scythe was aimed at a point between Crowley’s eyes. “Your deal with Nathan Ford offends the natural order of the universe. End it _now_ , and take no further action against this family.”  
*************************************  
Nate had thought he’d seen everything there was to see about his daughter. Faith wasn’t a saint – as far from it as any of them – but he’d seen her at her worst as well as her best, and it hadn’t shaken his feelings for her.

He’d never – not once – been afraid of her. Not before now.

“You don’t know how to use that,” Crowley said, but past his sneer of contempt Nate read a hint of uncertainty. He was afraid. The _thing_ that had ruled his waking hours so completely since before they’d left Boston was finally afraid.

“Push me,” Faith said, grinning darkly at their captive, “and find out.”

It was a game of chicken then, and if Nate was any judge of character the thing wearing his friend’s face wasn’t in the mood to play. Power swirled around the demon’s clenched fists. “If the old boy is so…offended…at my dealings, he can come tell me himself.”

A single spark arc’d out from the blade of the scythe, tracing a line of fire up Crowley’s cheek and pulling a howl from the demon’s throat. “You are not worth his time or his attention, _King._ You will do this because it’s what he wants, or you will die and no trick of heaven or hell will bring you back.”

Crowley raised a hand. A jagged streak of lightning arc’d out from his palm, but instead of threatening Faith, it struck a circular barrier around the demon and washed out in a brilliant flash of light.

Nate couldn’t breathe. He was having trouble thinking. The moment all of them had dreamed of – some with hope, him with dread – was finally here.

Two more times lightning arc’d out from Crowley’s hands – two more times they had to shield their eyes as the power washed out against the line of the trap Eliot and the Winchesters had constructed for him. “This isn’t fair!” Crowley bellowed. “Making deals is my right! Nothing was done that Nate Ford didn’t freely agree to.”

Faith struck, and for one heart-stopping moment Nate thought that she’d ended it. When they could see again, Crowley had a matching burn on his other cheek, and his eyes were glowing red. “Destiny’s spoiler,” Faith said. “I never understood why you hated us as much as the angels seemed to, but it’s because we’re his agents isn’t it? It’s because we serve a higher authority than good or evil. The reapers maintain order among the humans, but it’s a Slayer’s job to keep the balance in the world of the monsters. Your world, King of Hell.”

Nate tensed, only half certain what he wanted to say, but knowing that he couldn’t stay silent and continue to let things escalate in front of him without doing _something_.

Almost as if he’d read Nate’s thoughts – and for all Nate knew he had – Eliot gripped his shoulder. “For once in your life boss, just shut up,” he whispered, a distinct note of pleading in his voice. Startled, Nate turned to look at his hitter.

Eliot’s blue eyes were overfull. “Let her do this. For once in your life, let her fight for you the way we all wish we could.”

“Eliot…” Whatever Nate had been intending to say died in his throat as he saw Parker and Hardison’s expressions. They’d heard what their teammate had said, and if he knew them at all Nate could see they agreed.

“This is what it’s like knowing that you’re somebody worth loving,” Sophie murmured, slipping under his free arm and snuggling in close to his side. “Somebody worth fighting for.”

It took Nate a moment to realize he was crying. “I’m not,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “Sophie, I’m not.”

“Dude,” Hardison said, reaching across to grip his arm. “You’ve got a bona fide superhero fighting for you over there. I think she’d have a thing or two to say about you being worth it.”

Parker shook her head. “Faith isn’t a superhero,” she said. “That’s a goddess over there, Nate. Fighting for you.”

“The way we all would,” Eliot repeated.  
**************************  
Giles had told her once about a spell he, Buffy, Xander and Willow had done to bestow the entire power of the Slayer line on Buffy so she could fight an unstoppable monster. The spell hadn’t been without its downside, and Faith had never had the courage to ask Buffy what the power had felt like from her perspective, but standing here now – facing down the demon who had almost stolen the ‘greatest blessing of her life’ – Faith had to imagine the rush had been similar.

Crowley was _afraid_ , and Faith had never felt more powerful in her life. She actually wanted to kill him, but Death had been very particular about that point before handing over his scythe. “You are working in a very gray area,” he’d said, before handing over the weapon. “Crowley is within his rights to make the deal he did, and your father allowed himself to be maneuvered into agreeing to it. Your demand must hinge on the power Nathan’s soul would give Crowley and how it will upset the balance of the universe even further.”

Death had then promised to intervene personally if she was unsuccessful, but as she watched Crowley grow smaller and smaller in front of her, Faith knew in her gut that it wasn’t going to be necessary.

She was on the verge of goosing him with another warning shot, when the monster wearing Jim Sterling’s face threw up his hands. “Fine.”

Faith blinked, unsure for a moment she’d heard correctly. Somewhere outside her field of vision she heard a quiet gasp. “You agree to release Nate’s soul with no qualifications and no restrictions?”

“I agree,” Crowley snarled, his eyes still glowing a fiery red.

Faith’s mind was racing. “And you agree to take no further action against him or any of the people who witness this agreement?” There were holes in what she was asking – there were always going to be holes – but she had to leave Crowley as little room for revenge as possible.

The King of Hell gestured at a point beyond her left shoulder, where Faith assumed Nate was standing. “So long as none of the witnesses move against me, I agree to make no move against them.” Which – she belatedly realized – left Sam and Dean still potentially in the line of fire, but as Eliot had told her a seeming lifetime ago, _“you know what the priority is”._

Risking a look over her shoulder, Faith sought out her father. Nate’s eyes were as wide as she’d ever seen them, his left hand pressed over his heart. “Well?” she asked, as their eyes met.

“Something’s definitely different,” he said, nodding. “It’s over. It’s definitely over.”

Chest tight with emotion, Faith turned her attention back to the prisoner. “Deal’s a deal,” she said, raising the scythe one final time. Using the tip, she carefully scored one of the lines of Crowley’s trap.

Fiery light flared once more, temporarily whiting out her vision. When it cleared, Crowley had moved well within her personal space. Faith tensed, but otherwise held her ground – keeping the scythe up and safely to the side. “I wouldn’t look to your Grand-Pappy for help too often you know. Having Death in your back pocket is the ultimate double-edged sword.”

Faith had no intention of ever calling on Death for anything except a social visit any time in the near future, but there was no reason for the King of Hell to know that. “We’re done here,” she told him, meeting his burning eyes without flinching.

“For now, yes,” Crowley agreed. Faith blinked, and in the next heartbeat he’d vanished.

There was a moment of stunned silence, then a tidal wave of noise crashed in on Faith as everyone processed what had finally happened. _It’s over. It’s over…it’s over…it’s over…_ The realization rolled through Faith’s thoughts, gaining strength and volume until it crashed into the awareness that she was still holding the supernatural equivalent of a nuclear bomb in her hands.

“How about I take that back where it belongs?”  
*******************************************  
Eliot couldn’t tell if there was a supernatural hand in the fact that none of them moved for several long moments after Tessa took the scythe back. Faith was still absolutely motionless in the center of the room, except for having let go her borrowed weapon at the reaper’s urging. The rasp of her breathing was almost the only sound in the room – the rise and fall of her chest the only motion he could register.

And then, just like that, it was done – over – and each of them in their own way began trying to cope with a world snapped painfully back to center. Nate and Sophie were kissing, as were Parker and Hardison. Dean was talking in a low tone with Sam and Thor – presumably filling them in as to the reason for Loki’s absence.

Finally there was Faith – triumphant, flush with power, and the most beautiful thing Eliot had ever seen in his life. “You did it,” he said, moving forward. She was starting to come back to herself at last, and her dark eyes tracked him automatically as he came to her. “You saved us. You saved us all.” Grabbing her up in his arms, he swung her in a full circle before settling into a fierce, passionate kiss.

Because it wasn’t just Nate who had been saved in the end. Sophie, Hardison, him – in the end Faith had saved them all. Eliot knew he would hear the details of everything that had happened in the days and weeks to come and he looked forward to hearing them – no matter how crazy or reckless the whole mess might turn out to be. 

Right now though, all he could focus on was the woman in his arms, the family that surrounded him, and know that he was never going to take any of it for granted again.  
********************************  
The group of them were fairly evenly split over the issue of trying to clean up first, or going straight to the celebration. For his part, Nate was having trouble stringing two words together with any kind of coherency, so he was more than happy to let Eliot and Hardison argue out the particulars. The things he wanted out of the next several hours were things that couldn’t be had in any sort of mixed, polite company.

He was on the verge of suggesting that he and Sophie slip away for some quick alone time, when he realized that Loki’s brother was still with them. Thor – an alien, a superhero – and a man who knew much of the same loss any of them did, was helping Dean clean the chalk marks off the back wall of the office. Slipping free of Sophie’s arms quite reluctantly, Nate went over to talk to the larger man. “I wanted to tell you how grateful I was that your brother was willing to try and help me. Was someone able to tell you what happened while we were gone?”

Dean cleared his throat. “I told him about the compromise…and that Loki didn’t take it well.”

Grateful to the younger man for at least paving the way, Nate nodded, turning his attention back to Thor. “It was obvious he loved your mother very much. And she loved him.”

This close he could see that while Thor’s grief was quieter and more contained than his brother’s had been, it was no less profound. “I told him he should not pursue this, but as children we will often do anything for a beloved parent.” Nate felt the weight of sympathy with the Avenger, remembering Faith flush with more power than any normal human being should have been able to wield – power she had embraced for love of him.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get the same chance to say good-bye,” Nate offered. Loki had received a precious gift in the ability to speak with his mother one final time, even if he had been able to appreciate it – it seemed unfair that the brother with more mature outlook had been denied the same opportunity.

Thor waved off Nate’s concern, but it was obvious that he appreciated the gesture. “My mother knows how I feel about her, just as I know how she feels about me. We are both where we are supposed to be, and – the Gods willing- we will see each other again in the halls of Valhalla.” He reached out and gripped Nate’s shoulder. “You are a good man sir, with a family who loves you deeply. If you feel there is any sort of debt between us, promise me that you will never take that for granted.”  
***************************  
“You’re late.”

She was, but Parker suspected his petulance was more from the fact that she had summoned him – and Lindsey McDonald wasn’t used to being summoned by the likes of her. “I have good news,” she said, taking her hand out of her jacket pocket and dropping a fistful of silver jewelry into his palm. “It’s over. Crowley withdrew the deal.”

If she had walked up and slapped him across the face, the thief suspected that Lindsey would have looked less stunned. _He would have expected the slap._ “Eliot?” he asked.

Parker smiled. “No exceptions, no contingencies. He doesn’t get back any of his abilities, but everybody walks away clean. The reason she’d been late for their meeting was a celebration that she suspected would still be in high gear when she returned.

Lindsey closed his fingers over the jewelry she’d returned, his ragged intake of breath almost a sob. “So it’s really over?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that,” Parker said. “And now you can get that alarm thing you did out of my brain. It’s been attracting attention.” Memory of Loki in her head, examining the spell Lindsey had cast made her shudder.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in telling you if you wouldn’t let supernatural beings go poking around in your skull they wouldn’t notice that we’d done anything?” Lindsey countered. Stepping in on her though, he raised a hand to her head.

Parker leaned instinctively into his touch, letting muscle and sense memory take the lead for a moment. It had been good between them once upon a time – good in a way she suspected none of the others would ever believe, even if she could find the words to tell them. And if Lindsey was starting to remember that side of himself, the side she had known when they both belonged to Rossum, that couldn’t be a bad thing, could it?

 _Still though…_ ”I’m not Zulu,” she reminded him as he leaned in closer and she felt his breath on her skin. “And you’re not him. Not anymore.”

Fingers that should have been calloused but weren’t, lightly traced the curve of her jaw. “Not entirely.” And then his lips were on hers – kissing her in a way that made her feel warm and safe, a way that stirred up memory of nights spent together in too-small pods talking about everything and nothing.

Moaning low in her throat, Parker twined her arms around Lindsey’s neck and kissed him back. She could have stopped him, and in that part of her brain that didn’t still belong to Uniform and the Dollhouse she knew she would if he pushed things any further.

Fortunately for both of them, pushing physical boundaries didn’t seem to be on Lindsey’s agenda for the evening. “Hardison doesn’t kiss you like that, does he?” he asked though, as they separated. His voice was soft and warm, and Parker couldn’t find it in herself to be mad at him for asking the question.

That didn’t mean she had to be completely nice about how she responded to it. “No he doesn’t,” she agreed. “He kisses me how I like to be kissed.”

His answering smile was only slightly bitter. “I deserved that.” Pulling away even further, he seemed to settle into himself before raising a hand again – this time to her forehead. “May I?”

Appreciating that he asked, Parker nodded, closing her eyes.

While the nature of the spell was intimate, Parker appreciated that Lindsey didn’t linger inside her head. Being forced into contact with each other might have stirred up long forgotten feelings, but the reason for their partnership had always been very clear: concern for Eliot’s safety. _First, last and always._

When it was over, Lindsey stepped completely outside her personal space, deliberately shoving his hands in his pockets. “Thank you for letting me know it’s over.”

“I’m sure Eliot will tell you himself, once he’s sure we’re all safe,” Parker offered, but even as she said the words she knew it was what Sophie liked to call a “little white lie”. And from the look in Lindsey’s eyes, he knew it too. “Have you heard from Giles?”

So many bonds forged and broken in the wake of Nate’s deal with Crowley, thinking about it for too long made Parker’s head hurt. Arguably the worst had been the break between Faith and her former Watcher Rupert Giles. Giles had opposed Faith’s relationship with her father for similar reasons why Lindsey hated Nate’s influence over Eliot, and when the specter of Crowley’s deal had threatened to rock the stability of everything they knew and loved, the two men had come together to try and take Nate out of the equation entirely.

“Last I heard he was still two steps ahead of Rossum,” Lindsey said. “Try and get Faith to leave it alone if you can, will you? Slayers have this tendency to inject chaos where it doesn’t belong.”

It echoed what the others had been saying – Faith included – but Parker knew better than to speak for her teammate. “I’ll do what I can.”  
*******************************************  


Faith hated being the buzzkill, but one of the immutable facts of magic was that wielding the kind of power she had – even for a short time – carried a huge cost. “Go tell your dad good night,” Eliot said, grinning at her as she tried to hide a face-splitting yawn. “Let me take you home.”

Two different sarcastic remarks got tangled up in her brain and tripped over each other on the way to her mouth. “Why don’t I do that,” Faith agreed, conceding defeat at last. Eliot helped her to her feet and got her pointed in the direction where Nate sat – Sophie on his lap. The two of them were so wrapped up in each other, Faith almost hated to interfere. Before she could back away though, Nate spotted her.

“I hope you’re going to tell me Eliot’s taking you home,” he said, helping Sophie to a different chair, and getting to his feet.

Faith nodded. “And he’s not going to have as much fun as you look like you’re getting ready to have. You’ve got a room upstairs, you know,” she teased.

“And I’m going to use it, thank you very much,” Nate said, taking her by the arm and steering her out of earshot. “I also didn’t channel the power of Death through my body,” he added, turning to face her. “I’m assuming this is the kind of thing that a good night’s sleep will fix?”

Faith was touched almost to tears by the look of concern in his eyes. “If the theory holds, yes,” she reassured him. “If not, I’ve got a witch on speed dial and I promise I’ll have Eliot call her.”

Nate’s relief at her assessment was immediate and obvious. “Think we can get a week without any supernatural weirdness?”

“I’m angling for two,” Faith said, throwing her arms around his neck and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Three if the powers that be are feeling generous.” She clung to him for a long moment, hardly able to believe that it was over – that the shadow on their lives for the last year and handful of months was finally gone. “Love you, Dad.”

His fingers flexed against her back, holding her tightly and possessively for a long moment. “Love you too, Faith. With all my heart and soul.”

http://jeminamoonnight.tumblr.com/post/167979364780/gifset-made-for-telaryns-fic-the-freedom-job-as


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